foot in mouth disease strikes walmart's main man andrew young

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Wal-Mart Image-Builder Resigns

By MICHAEL BARBARO and STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: August 18, 2006

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.”

Mr. Young, 74, a former mayor of Atlanta and a former United States representative to the United Nations, apologized for the comments and retracted them in an interview last night. Less than an hour later, he resigned as chairman of Working Families for Wal-Mart, a group created and financed by the company to trumpet its accomplishments.

“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.”

His remarks drew forceful condemnation from Arab, Jewish and Asian leaders.

The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham H. Foxman, called the comments “very hurtful.”

“The sad part,” he said, is that “even people of color and even minorities who suffered discrimination and prejudice are not immune from being bigoted and racist and even anti-Semitic.”

In the six months that Mr. Young was under contract with the Wal-Mart-financed group, he traveled the country promoting the retailer, meeting with community groups and writing opinion pieces for local newspapers.

“I am more of a spokesman than the chairman of Wal-Mart,” he remarked, referring to his work on behalf of the company.

Wal-Mart executives moved quickly last night to distance themselves from Mr. Young’s remarks. “Ambassador Young’s comments do not reflect our feelings toward the Jewish, Asian or Arab communities or any other diverse group,” a company spokeswoman, Mona Williams, said.

“Needless to say, we were appalled when the comments came to our attention,” Ms. Williams said. “We were also dismayed that they would come from someone who has worked so hard for so many years for equal rights in this country. Ambassador Young has done the right thing to apologize and to ask for a retraction. We also support his decision to resign.”

Margaret Fung, executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said, “Andrew Young should know better than to resort to derogatory ethnic stereotypes about Korean storeowners in black neighborhoods.”

Khaled Lamada, former president of the Arab Muslim American Federation and currently director of outreach for the Muslim American Society, said that Mr. Young’s statements were “not fair” and that they “shame” the Muslim community.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said “these are stereotypical remarks that any leader of the civil rights movement should run away from rather than utter.”

Explaining his comments about Koreans, Jews and Arabs, Mr. Young said he was referring to the history of retail ownership in the neighborhood where he lives in southwestern Atlanta.

“Almost everyone who has come into my community has moved in, made money and moved out and moved up,” he said. “That process is still continuing.”

Over the last two years, Wal-Mart efforts to open stores in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York have been blocked. Because of Mr. Young’s background, Wal-Mart had looked to him to ease its entry into such cities.

“The only thing I can do,” Mr. Young said last night before he resigned, “is to ask that people judge me about a life of working together with people who are different and bringing people together without violence and without rancor. I would hope that would count for something.”

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 18 August 2006 10:56 (nineteen years ago)

every time i wanna go get a fuckin brew

― dave q (listerine), Friday, 18 August 2006 11:07 (nineteen years ago)

Nice to see Jews and Muslims agreeing on something.

― Hello Sunshine (Hello Sunshine), Friday, 18 August 2006 11:49 (nineteen years ago)

ooooooouuuuuuuuuuuch.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 18 August 2006 11:56 (nineteen years ago)

Mr Young is in discussions with a high profile Hollywood director and actor about a possible joint PR venture.

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Friday, 18 August 2006 11:58 (nineteen years ago)

andrew please open up your own store and show the Jews, Arabs and Koreans how it's done

― laurence kansas (lawrence kansas), Friday, 18 August 2006 12:36 (nineteen years ago)

doesnt walmart sell bad meat and stale bread?

― Mr Jones (Mr Jones), Friday, 18 August 2006 12:39 (nineteen years ago)

NEVER buy "fresh" meat at Wal-Mart.

― Danny Aioli (Rock Hardy), Friday, 18 August 2006 13:26 (nineteen years ago)

walmart and andrew young are obviously in cahoots with the powerful chore boy scouring pad lobby. a product that many inner-city stores refuse to sell so as to discourage crackheads from entering their premises. walmart has always been pro-chore boy.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 18 August 2006 13:53 (nineteen years ago)

also, walmart, ominously enough, has always worked closely with the well-financed Single Roses In Glass Tubes Coalition.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 18 August 2006 13:55 (nineteen years ago)

whats with those glass tubes? WHat is their "suggested use" anyway?

― Mr Jones (Mr Jones), Friday, 18 August 2006 16:33 (nineteen years ago)

The civil rights leader Andrew Young (professionally known as "Professor Griff"), who was hired by Wal-Mart to improve its public image

― Sir Dr. Rev. PappaWheelie Jr. II of The Third Kind (PappaWheelie 2), Friday, 18 August 2006 16:55 (nineteen years ago)

Your friend and mine J. Goldberg seeks to 'defend everyone concerned.'

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 18 August 2006 16:58 (nineteen years ago)

Professor Griff takes a bite out of purveyors of wilted lettuce!

― Aimless (Aimless), Friday, 18 August 2006 17:02 (nineteen years ago)

"yo they sell milque toast?"

― Sir Dr. Rev. PappaWheelie Jr. II of The Third Kind (PappaWheelie 2), Friday, 18 August 2006 17:08 (nineteen years ago)

(p.s., I initailly thought this thread was talking about Andre Young, to keep this thread hip-hop yo)

― Sir Dr. Rev. PappaWheelie Jr. II of The Third Kind (PappaWheelie 2), Friday, 18 August 2006 17:09 (nineteen years ago)

I don't think I've never seen a Jewish liquor/corner store owner in America in my entire life. I thought we were all bankers and movie execs!

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 18 August 2006 17:21 (nineteen years ago)

i feel sorry for your mother

― mentalismé (sanskrit), Friday, 18 August 2006 17:25 (nineteen years ago)

now we know Mel Gibson's next picture
STALE BREAD, BAD MEAT & WILTED VEGETABLES: The Andrew Young Story

― timmy tannin (pompous), Friday, 18 August 2006 17:32 (nineteen years ago)

The all-round defense isn't bad. This is actually one of those things where there's a legitimate point to be made about the really poor availability of goods in certain types of neighborhoods, but obviously it's just silly and stupid to round up the profit-makers as "the Jews" or "the Koreans" or "the Arabs," as if there's some nefarious group dynamic going on. (The fact that the situation remains unchanged no matter who owns these stores is probably a good clue that the problems are economic and systemic, not built on some kind of opportunistic price-gouging.)

The interesting part is that he might be right about how stores like Wal-Mart can help in these situations -- they put a kind of fix on the minimum quality of goods and their minimum prices, and that does kind of give people more consumer power. But of course, as anyone who's ever been to a chain store in a poor neighborhood can tell you, the thing is that even supposedly regularized chains have a weird way of crumbling down to match their surroundings.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 18 August 2006 17:49 (nineteen years ago)

I suppose the guy's excuse could be "I wasn't saying it was because of Jews or Koreans or Arabs, just noting that these groups often owned these sorts of stores," but then the question would be, you know, why bothing noting it? The stores could be owned by Martians, it wouldn't make any difference to your point.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 18 August 2006 17:51 (nineteen years ago)

a good excuse could be that he's 74 years old. geez.

a-rab. . .He might as well have said Orientals.

I love that Scott's down with the crack paraphanlia.

― Handmaiden of Hip Hop (Molly Jones), Friday, 18 August 2006 18:12 (nineteen years ago)

if it was chuck d singing this, ilm would be all about it.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 August 2006 18:16 (nineteen years ago)

OTM

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Friday, 18 August 2006 18:17 (nineteen years ago)

Chuck D wouldn't sing it. That's why he dismissed Professor Griff. That's why I made that joke upthread.

― Sir Dr. Rev. PappaWheelie Jr. II of The Third Kind (PappaWheelie 2), Friday, 18 August 2006 18:19 (nineteen years ago)

ice cube, on the other hand

― gear (gear), Friday, 18 August 2006 18:27 (nineteen years ago)

or the coup, or ice cube, or paris, or whatever...

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 August 2006 18:33 (nineteen years ago)

or kanye...

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 August 2006 18:34 (nineteen years ago)

"if it was dave pajo posting this thread, hstencil would be all about it."

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 18 August 2006 18:39 (nineteen years ago)

Or well no, that's not really funny, but it's like ... the charge of hypothetical hypocrisy there doesn't really fly, I don't think, not just because the hypothetical is always too easy, but also because ILM and ILE have totally different posters these days! (I'm sure ILM posters would be easier to manipulate into supporting the guy's statement, yes.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 18 August 2006 18:48 (nineteen years ago)

:-(

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 18 August 2006 18:50 (nineteen years ago)

"I was speaking in the context of Atlanta, and that does not work in New York or Los Angeles.”

that makes it so much better - localized, precise prejudice is justifiable.

― timmy tannin (pompous), Friday, 18 August 2006 18:55 (nineteen years ago)

my guess would be that ATL has more black-owned businesses than NYC.

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Friday, 18 August 2006 19:02 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, that part's hilarious: "I apologize, the stereotype of the malicious Korean shopowner with a primarily black clientele may be misinterpreted by those unfamiliar with it, such as RESIDENTS OF LOS ANGELES."

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 18 August 2006 19:11 (nineteen years ago)

"I'm apologize, I just watched Crash on DVD."

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 18 August 2006 19:12 (nineteen years ago)

I do think there's a slight thing in operation here where black people of his generation are a lot more used to thinking in terms of Our Community versus Their Community (for fairly obvious reasons), but then that kind of thinking is not just less useful these days (because analyses of one race-community versus another aren't complicated enough to explain most things), but also don't fit the way we talk about these issues, just in terms of our politeness and our attempts not to fall into groupthink -- our ways of talking about these things have gotten better, I'd say, and so this comes off as a kind of crusty, old-fashioned, and offensive way of putting things.

(The opposite number of that might be something like that one jacked-up and awfully colorful Byrd statement, which if you unpack it enough is kind of well-meaning at the core.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 18 August 2006 19:20 (nineteen years ago)

Why can't I find a stil of Sweet Dick Willy and compnay in Do the Right Thing right before Robin Harris's character buys licker from the Korean store.?.

― Sir Dr. Rev. PappaWheelie Jr. II of The Third Kind (PappaWheelie 2), Friday, 18 August 2006 19:27 (nineteen years ago)

"black like you"

― Sir Dr. Rev. PappaWheelie Jr. II of The Third Kind (PappaWheelie 2), Friday, 18 August 2006 19:27 (nineteen years ago)

D motherfucker D

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 18 August 2006 19:31 (nineteen years ago)

I guess Young's legacy at this point is being subject of a dick riff in the first Richard Pryor concert film.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 18 August 2006 19:36 (nineteen years ago)

enjoy your m.i.a. records, nabisco.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 August 2006 20:26 (nineteen years ago)

anyway talk about senator george allen, you dudes.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 August 2006 20:41 (nineteen years ago)

I have no idea what that first joke even means, Stencil!

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 18 August 2006 20:44 (nineteen years ago)

i'm not joking.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 August 2006 20:51 (nineteen years ago)

So I should expect to get some M.I.A. records from you in the mail?

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 18 August 2006 20:53 (nineteen years ago)

nope, bitch jumped shit for the $$$$.

because, y'know, ethnic groups should be encouraged to kill each other.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 August 2006 20:57 (nineteen years ago)

anyway here's the sen. allen thing:

Racism has no place in the US Senate.

Senator Allen Photo

Call on the Republican National Committee to withdraw its support for Sen. Allen's candidacy.

Click Here

Dear Thomas,

No politician should think it's okay to single someone out based on their skin color, to assume they're not "American" because of their ethnicity, or to call them "monkey" or a French equivalent of "nigger."1 Any politician that does shouldn't be in the US Senate--or have any place in American politics. Senator George Allen has done all these things, and he should step down now. Please join us in calling on the Republican National Committee to withdraw its support for his candidacy.

http://www.colorofchange.org/allen/?id=2488-52811

Last Friday at a campaign event, Sen. Allen singled out the only non-white person in the audience, a staffer from his opponent's campaign, and called him "macaque," twice.1 Macaque (phonetically spelled "macaca") means monkey in French and is used as racist slur in Europe and by white supremacists in the US. Allen then said that he wanted to "Welcome [him] to America," as if he were a visitor to this country. The young man, S.R. Sidarth, is as American as any of us--he was born and raised in Virginia. You can see the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G7gq7GQ71c.

Sen. Allen's campaign has claimed that "macaque" was just a variation on "mohawk," which Allen's campaign staffers had taken to calling Sidarth in reference to his haircut. It's hard to see how you get from "mohawk" to "macaque." And it's highly doubtful that Senator Allen was unaware that "macaque" is a deeply offensive racial epithet--Senator Allen speaks French, and his mother is from Tunisia, a country where the term is used as a slur.3,4

Most of us don't know this, but Sen. Allen has a uniquely disturbing history when it comes to race. Although he grew up in California, early on he seemed to adopt the racist ideology that represents the worst of the South's legacy.5 As a high school student in Southern California, he had an obsession with the confederate flag--applying it on his person, car, and around school. As an adult in Virginia, he hung the confederate flag prominently in his house. As governor of Virginia, he issued a proclamation romanticizing the South's position in the civil war as "a struggle for independence and sovereign rights." He had a noose on display in his law office – hanging from a tree. As a state representative, he opposed the creation of a holiday commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr. And he has called the NAACP an extremist organization.6

Allen's remarks to Sidarth arise from the same kind of worldview that causes some people to say "go back to Africa" – the idea that this is white people's territory. Had Allen called an African-American "monkey," "darkey," or told the person to "go back to Africa," his political career would be over. It should be no different when the attack is directed at someone of Indian descent. Whether to please a white audience, or as a reflection of Allen's worldview, Allen's behavior has no place American politics. Join us in calling on the RNC to withdraw its support for Allen, and to find a candidate who actually espouses American values:

http://www.colorofchange.org/allen/?id=2488-52811

Thank You and Peace,

-- James, Van, Clarissa, Gabriel, and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
August 17th, 2006

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 August 2006 21:05 (nineteen years ago)

The funniest part of that is that the guy has a mullet, not a mohawk.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 18 August 2006 21:17 (nineteen years ago)

nabisco otm(re: Young). What I don't get is where Wal-Mart was supposed to fit in(positively) if one was to take his argument at face value. Dropping an lazy anachronistic turd like this into what very well should be a vibrant discussion of inner-city economics is the sign of a grasping, careless pr man, not an individual with fealty to some 'community'.

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Friday, 18 August 2006 22:07 (nineteen years ago)

I don't know which I'm more disturbed by - Young's comment or the appearance that people on this thread had never heard of him before

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, 18 August 2006 22:22 (nineteen years ago)

(some people)

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, 18 August 2006 22:23 (nineteen years ago)

I know who he is, if I'm some people. I think I've met him!

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Friday, 18 August 2006 22:42 (nineteen years ago)

ha, his comment is very disturbing, and where's the evidence that people don't know his backstory?

― timmy tannin (pompous), Friday, 18 August 2006 22:54 (nineteen years ago)

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