At least Carter-era UN Ambassador and former Mayor Andrew Young didn't call a police officer "sugar tits" when unleashing his bigoted tirade:

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.”

It's unfortunate that Mayor Young decided to perpetuate racial and ethnic stereotypes in his evaluation of urban economics, because he actually has a point. Store owners in blighted neighborhoods -- no matter who owns them -- do charge much higher prices for lower-quality goods. That comes from the high risk associated with business ventures in the neighborhoods, and that requires the owners to either pay high insurance rates or do without. Either choice requires the owners to get as much margin as possible in a short period of time. Also, most family-owned businesses don't create jobs in these areas, because the families usually run the businesses themselves to save even more overhead.

In that respect, Young told the truth. The romantic view of mom-and-pop small-business retail might apply in places like Solvang and Belmont Shore, but in the inner city it represents a critical loss of buying power and employment. Their displacement by a retailer like Wal-Mart, a provider of low prices and much-needed employment, hardly seems like a disaster for communities in these economic straits.

However, rather than explain it in economic terms, Young gave vent to his inner bigot and trotted out a veritable cornucopia of paranoia. Unlike Mel Gibson, whose drunken state could arguably have created an irrational mental state (or he could just be an anti-Semite), Young has no such excuse. Not only was Young sober, but the statements came in a newspaper interview, when Young knew his statements would go on record. Nor does his apology quite wash; he implies that anti-Semitism and anti-Asian bigotry is rational and understandable in Atlanta, if not in Los Angeles or New York. Atlantans might take offense at that suggestion -- well, perhaps most Atlantans, excepting the McKinney family.

The world issued condemnations for days after Mel Gibson's drunken outburst. It will be interesting to see whether the same people rush to condemn Andrew Young's measured and deliberate bigotry. (via TMV)

Addendum: Of course, Young's economic argument for the benefits Wal-Mart brings to blighted neighborhoods clashes strongly with the new war that Democrats have declared on the retailer. Perhaps the Democrats may want to re-think their effort to demonize the organization that allows the poor to extend their buying power.

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