The NAACP’s national office told TPM on Monday there clearly needs to be a better vetting process for awards given out by its local chapters after its Los Angeles branch was embarrassed into withdrawing an award it planned to give to basketball team owner Donald Sterling.
The comments came after Sterling, who owns the Los Angeles Clippers, was reportedly caught on audio making racially charged remarks.
Contacted by TPM about why Sterling was being given a lifetime achievement award in the first place, a spokesman at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s national office said that it is “in the process of developing specific guidelines for selecting recipients moving forward.”
“At the national office, we can’t speak to the intentions of those in the LA Branch who selected Mr. Sterling as an award winner in 2009 or recently, but clearly there needs to be more scrutiny of potential recipients and a better vetting process,” Derek Turner, the NAACP’s director of communications, told TPM in an email. “We are in the process of developing specific guidelines for selecting recipients moving forward.”
The NAACP’s Los Angeles branch has elected not to give Sterling the award after audio became public of the owner asking a girlfriend not to bring black people to the team’s games.
