“Clean-up in aisle five!”

Shorter Andrew Young: “between a faceless conglomerate & those damn jews & ay-rabs I know who I’d pick!”

Civil rights leader Andrew Young resigned as chairman of a group intended to boost Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s image after he made remarks to a newspaper disparaging Jewish, Arab and Korean shop owners.

Young told the Los Angeles Sentinel, 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,” The New York Times said.

I’ve gotta go off on something here: a lot of supposed black “leaders” have things fucked up. They see no difference between being concerned about blacks & being anti-everyone-else, and sadly people buy into it. It seems after the meltdown of things like the Panthers our capacity for anger went haywire, to the point where a sizeable chunk of blacks who’re somewhat politically active think everything is race. Stop it, you’re embarassing us.

He apologized, but the damage is done really…

“I recently made some comments about former store owners in my neighborhood that were completely and utterly inappropriate,” the statement said. “Those comments run contrary to everything I have dedicated my life to.” (emphasis mine)

You’re damn right they do. Anger at all arabs, jews, & koreans over the actions of a few who happen to own local businesses is racism, no point in sugar coating it. Not only is it that, but him supporting Wal-Mart because of it is also a contradiction: Large-scale corporations like Wal-Mart depend on government power to subsidize their operation, making it artificially cheap, and who is is that runs the majority of the government in the US? White people! So even if you accept the view of hypocritically using race as an ever present Blame-o-Matic, supporting them feeds the same thing you claim to despise!

The real key to those mom & pop shops is not race. They aren’t going out of business because they’re all bigoted & Wal-Mart loves minorities, no. They’re going out of business because through the State the market has been rigged to promote size for its own sake. Once again, government is the problem: it rewards inefficiency & drives a wedge between people, making all cultural issues into political issues. The faster that people like Andrew Young learn this, the better.

BTW: In case anyone is wondering, there is a reason I have as a sub-heading to this site “thoughts from a big angry negro”. Ever since I was old enough to understand, I’ve been puzzled by the endorsement of statism by many minority activists — even the “whitey is the devil!!” types. I remember asking myself why they show so much anger yet co-operate with the same institution they imply is beyond repair. Though it is not the focus of this site, I feel strongly that minorities in general, & blacks in particular, made a critical error in attaching the civil rights struggle to government: what is granted can easily be taken away. Having seen how throughout history the State has routinely supported bigotry, I came to see libertarianism as the logical conclusion to the arguements made.

What government in the US did to blacks, governments everywhere have done to everyone. So in a way, everyone has legitimate reason to be a “big angry negro”, whether you’re black, white, brown, yellow, purple, whatever. No man should trust their government, I don’t care what you look like.