Frank Daniels III: Frank talk on prejudice was welcome

• "We are all prejudiced."
• But we should be able to be mature about managing our prejudices.

Lost in the 140-character invective that ruled the reaction to Mark Cuban's appearance at Inc.'s GrowCo conference last week was a very interesting conversation with a entrepreneur who has a clear eye on what it takes to be successful today.

He was unequivocal about how business leaders cannot afford to let their personal prejudices interfere with their responsibilities to their company, their customers or the society they operate in.

Cuban, the billionaire owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, relishes the opportunity to poke the beasts that social conventions hold sacred, and he knew his comments on bigotry and prejudice would be taken out of context. He closed the interview by prophesying, "I am sure that will be all over the place."

He knows, and plays the media well. It was a matter of moments before the Twitterverse was foaming over his comments.

Knows how to apologize

He also understands how to deal with unintended offense and was quick to apologize to Trayvon Martin's family for the inappropriateness of his hoodie reference.

Cuban and his fellow NBA owners will soon vote on the excommunication of LA Clippers owner Don Sterling, who has none of Cuban's talent for managing media storms.

Sterling, whose extremely offensive racist remarks to his girlfriend became public as part of their spat, was pathetically unprepared to deal with the public outrage that his comments, secretly recorded by his "lover," caused.

It was days before he apologized, and by the time he stumbled through his attempted apology, the cow was not only out of the barn, it had been butchered, and the steaks were aging.

Cuban, rather clumsily, I thought, tried to explain his concern that he did not want to be a hypocrite about the harsh consequences that the NBA will likely mete out for the "private thoughts" Sterling expressed.

Prejudice

"We are all prejudiced in one way or another," Cuban said. "We fear what we do not understand. ...

"My stream of thought is never perfect, but part of maturing is, when you have imperfect thoughts, catching yourself."

Just so; another part of maturing is making amends when you say something offensive, especially when you are the leader of an organization.

We all say stupid stuff, hopefully not as offensively stupid as Sterling, but most of us are mature enough to own our mistakes.

So thanks, Mark Cuban, for your inadvertent lesson on being a responsible business leader.

A Sunday contemplation

Cuban's comments, and some recent actions by our political leaders, stirred me to recall a poem by Martin Niemöller (1892-1984), a German pastor whose support of Nazi Germany crumbled when Adolf Hitler began
giving church leaders who questioned his decisions the same treatment he had shown other "undesirables."

Niemöller, who had supported the Nazis and was a submarine commander in World War I, was imprisoned in concentration camps from 1939 until the end of the war. He became a pacifist and anti-war activist, and he tried to express his amends with this poem:

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out —

because I was not a communist;

Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out —

because I was not a socialist;

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out —

because I was not a trade unionist;

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —

because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for me —

and there was no one left to speak out for me."

Thank you to all those who stand up and speak for each of us.

Frank Daniels is the community conversations editor of The Tennessean. Reach him at 615-881-7039 and on Twitter @fdanielsiii.