(EPA/Ashley Landis)
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has apologized for a portion of an interview in which he spoke of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s racist comments and his own prejudices.
Specifically, Cuban apologized to the family of Trayvon Martin, the teenager who was wearing a hoodie when he was shot to death in Florida in 2012. Cuban said, in a string of tweets, that he “should have used different examples” as he sought to illustrate prejudices that he says everyone has. In his remarks to Inc. magazine, Cuban said: “I know I’m prejudiced and I know I’m bigoted in a lot of different ways,” he said. “If I see a black kid in a hoodie on my side of the street, I’ll move to the other side of the street. If I see a white guy with a shaved head and tattoos, I’ll move back to the other side of the street. None of us have pure thoughts; we all live in glass houses.”
Late Thursday, he tweeted:
P/1: In hindsight I should have used different examples. I didn’t consider the Trayvon Martin family, and I apologize to them for that.
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 22, 2014P/2: beyond apologizing to the Martin family, I stand by the words and substance of the interview.
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 22, 2014P/3: I think that helping people improve their lives, helping people engage with people they may fear or may not understand,
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 22, 2014P/4: and helping people realize that while we all may have our prejudices and bigotries
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 22, 2014P/5: we have to learn that it’s an issue that we have to control, that it’s part of my responsibility as an entrepreneur to try to solve it
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 22, 2014More
