Andy Young’s Truth, America’s Blues

I couldn't have blogged about this better myself . . .

By Terry Smith
BlackProf.com

Imagine a Korean-American neighborhood in which the supplies for Korean restaurants are sold primarily by black merchants.  Imagine a Jewish neighborhood where blacks are most of the property owners and merchants, or an Arab-American neighborhood where primarily blacks sell fried chicken to its inhabitants.  You are unlikely to find any such places in the United States today, but you are sure to find many black neighborhoods where these non-black groups are reaping profits from where they neither reside nor invest.

Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young may not have achieved MLK-like eloquence in his criticism of non-black ethnic groups who do business in black neighborhoods, but the attempt at turnabout in accusing this civil rights hero of racism won’t mask the basic truth of his observations.  Young recently resigned a post at Wal-Mart Stores that he never should have assumed on the heels of his comments that Wal-Mart should drive “mom and pop” stores out of business because such stores had “overcharged blacks” and sold them “stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables.”  Young continued, “I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough.  First it was Jews, then it was Korean, now it’s Arabs; very few black people own these stores.”
Which part of Young’s statement is untrue?  Poor neighborhoods in which blacks are disproportionately concentrated pay a “ghetto tax,” spending more for basic goods and services than most middle-income neighborhoods.  As for quality and price of the food and merchandise sold to the inhabitants of these neighborhoods, suburbanites and residents of white neighborhoods are not rushing to the ghetto for fresh fruit or bargains.  Indeed, if the “mom and pop” stores Young criticized fostered the good-will their names suggests, presumably many of them would be more competitive with larger chains.

That leaves us with Young’s temerity in calling out specific ethnic groups as having engaged in exploitative conduct toward black neighborhoods.  There’s a familiar pattern here.  A black public figure criticizes a particular ethnic group, such as Jews, and his sin of specification, rather than the substance of his charge, becomes the focus of public attention.  It’s the racial equivalent of wag the dog, a perfect deflection of the public’s attention from the real, more serious issue.  And a black public official is the perfect foil because his perceived gaffe dilutes the moral legacy of black people as victims of exploitation by virtually every ethnic group in the United States, including Jews, Koreans and Arabs.

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