I'm Very Disappointed
Andy Young should know better, but when you lie down with dogs . . .
The civil rights leader Andrew Young, who was hired by Wal-Mart to improve its public image, resigned from that post last night after telling an African-American newspaper that Jewish, Arab and Korean shop owners had “ripped off” urban communities for years, “selling us stale bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables.”
In the interview, published yesterday in The Los Angeles Sentinel, a weekly, Mr. Young said that Wal-Mart “should” displace mom-and-pop stores in urban neighborhoods.
“You see those are the people who have been overcharging us,” he said of the owners of the small stores, “and they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs.”
To be fair, he did walk the statement back, but according to the article he merely tried to narrow it down to Atlanta's locality and distance the statement from his civil rights record. But the "retraction" lacked an outright apology or denouncement of the offensive statement.
“It’s against everything I ever thought in my life,” Mr. Young said. “It never should have been said. I was speaking in the context of Atlanta, and that does not work in New York or Los Angeles.”
I almost expect this kind of glib, almost casual racism from Wingnuttistan, which is no more endearing than a Louis Farrakahn or David Duke screed, just more subtle. I expect a lot better from someone who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and represented this nation to the world as our UN Ambassador.
My observations that the Malkinization of right wing discourse has long concealed an innate and thinly disguised prejudice which can't help but bubble to the surface despite best intentions is hardly new, and "reverse racism" on the left is not necessarily a different phenomenon. "Yeah, but they do it too," is still a vestige of "separate but equal," and in no way absolves anyone's bad behavior.
Fighting fire with fire is no answer. The "Melting Pot" represents the best and the worst of this nation. We are a great and successful nation because of (and not despite) our diversity -- yet that diversity brings divergent groups into direct competition and conflict.
What you don't see is a universal, instinctive condemnation and suppression of such behavior unless committed by a public figure. If xenophobia, prejudice and racial stereotyping are somehow an ingrained human condition, that we're predisposed to it, it still does not offer any excuse. But I wonder if a concerted effort to completely eliminate it is indeed possible. For some, such feelings are so ingrained they become manifest in disgusting ways that indicate an even deeper problem.
Supposing that such tendencies are "natural," whether learned or genetic (my bet is on learned), it's possible to analogize it to displays of sexual attraction. A "wolf whistle" directed at an attractive young lady could be the equivalent of a racial slur, although one communicates desirability while the other quite the opposite. Possibly a better comparison would be an unwanted sexual advance likened to racial profiling, both offensive to the recipient. Sex and race preferences/discrimination are both illegal when considered in an employment situation, and unacceptable stereotyping is discouraged in social interaction whether bigoted in nature or a suggestion that "slutty" dress encourages sexual abuse.
However, no one would consider that the subtext of a drive-by "Yo, Baby!" at the construction site should justify calls to eliminate the underlying healthy sexual attraction manifested by the crude behavior. There is nothing "healthy" about the subconscious source of bigotry. It has absolutely no social benefit, as does procreation, and a casual display cannot be "laughed off," even in a social situation.
For the vast majority of people who understand that "no means no," and have no trouble resisting the urge to act out sexual desires, overt racism should be easily reduced to the unrepentant deviant or a thoughtless gaff, instantly recognized as beyond mere bad taste by the speaker him/herself, retracted and apologized for without prompting and with no absurd attempt at justification.
Just as "no means no," wrong is always wrong, period.
You know, you just know, that the right-wing Republican loyalists will be all over this story, using it to absolve Senator George Felix Allen's use of the "macaca" racial epithet.
Fact is, the two incidents are not even remotely close in tone or substance. And, I hasten to add, Young has stepped down from his position while Allen is trying to skate by his incident by issuing a new, disingenuous explanation almost every day since it happened.
Holy crap. I just read the Dean Esmay post (and comments) you linked to.
What a freak show.
That's what I was saying. Freak show is mild, Ara.
And BTW, if Andy Young were running for office, this would justifiably be hung around his neck. Whether he or Felix Jr. could withstand the condemnation (the way Nagin apparantly did) is another story.
What crap it was to see the Senator take a photo-op with a table full of Indian-Americans. Especially when the one guy there who the campaign would allow reporters to interview wasn't all that impressed. The rest must have thought even worse of the idiot.
It IS every bit as bad as George Allen's dumbassery.
It really is. "The Jews" is kind of the giveaway because no one really thinks of "The Jews" as shopkeepers anymore, not as a stereotype in any case
Actually, I slightly misread his comment, taking the words of the reporter first, rather than the actual quote.
It remains a very fireable offense. Wal-Mart, trying to exist as "a neighbor" and fighting the constant image that mom-and-pop stories go down the tolet when they arrive - which does indeed happen more often than not - and you have a guy - a PR guy - saying that M-A-P should be shut down for their gouging business practices. Yikes.
(And how's that for a tortured sentence ... the only torture I practice)