This Democratic donor doesn’t just spew words, this guy put his words into discriminatory action, and his issues have not been some closely kept secret.

In 2007, as ESPN notes, Sterling faced federal civil rights charges claiming that Sterling, his wife and three of his companies have engaged in discrimination, principally by refusing to rent to African-Americans.

According to one of his property managers, Summer Davenport, who testified in a lawsuit brought by 19 tenants and the nonprofit Housing Rights Center, Sterling “wanted tenants that fit his image”.

Cultivating his image, Davenport said, meant no blacks, no Mexican-Americans, no children (whom Sterling called “brats”) and no government-housing-subsidy recipients as tenants. So according to the testimony of tenants, Sterling employees made life difficult for residents in some of his new buildings. They refused rent checks, then accused renters of nonpayment. They refused to do repairs for black tenants and harassed them with surprise inspections, threatening residents with eviction for alleged violations of building rules…
When Sterling first bought the Ardmore [Apartments], he remarked on its odor to Davenport. “That’s because of all the blacks in this building, they smell, they’re not clean,” he said, according to Davenport’s testimony. “And it’s because of all of the Mexicans that just sit around and smoke and drink all day.” He added: “So we have to get them out of here.

Did that mean he wanted white people? No, he loved Korean tenants, apparently because he believed they wouldn’t complain when he failed to provide services in his apartments.

One tenant at the Ardmore was having difficulty because of a water leak in the building, causing her apartment to be flooded and her having to wade through water. The tenant was elderly, paralyzed and blind. She repeatedly had to walk to the manager’s office to beg for help to fix the problem. Sterling’s response?

“Is she one of those black people that stink?” When Davenport told Sterling that Jones wanted to be reimbursed for the water damage and compensated for her ruined property, he replied: “I am not going to do that. Just evict the bitch.”

Repairs never came, the toilet stopped working too and the tenant did end up leaving the apartment she had loved when she died within a year.

Elgin Baylor, who was the GM of the Clippers 1986 to 2008, filed an age and racial discrimination suit against Sterling noting that Sterling had repeatedly expressed a desire to field a team of “poor black boys from the South … playing for a white coach.” He also alleged the Clippers lost a lot of good players because they had an unwillingness to fairly compensate black players.

“During this same period, players Sam Cassell, Elton Brand and Corey Maggette complained to me that DONALD STERLING would bring women into the locker room after games, while the players were showering, and make comments such as, ‘Look at those beautiful black bodies.’ I brought this to Sterling’s attention, but he continued to bring women into the locker room.”

Despite all this, Sterling was still given the 2008 NAACP President’s Award, a 2009 NAACP Lifetime Achievement Award, and was chosen to receive a 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award next month. Why? Because he donated a lot of money to the NAACP. Many of these harassment/discrimination cases also went away after Sterling opened up his checkbook.

We’ve hit a couple of the highlights, but for greater depth, check more of this 2009 ESPN article on Donald Sterling, which covers the racial discrimination, treatment of tenants, his mistreatment of female employees and resulting lawsuits.