At VDare, Steve Sailer says all of the Things That Must Not Be Said about the recent Andrew Young flap.  Here he has some good remarks on something that is well-known to even the occasional viewer of Mind of Mencia:

That’s because there is a major disjunction in American public discourse between the relatively wide latitude you are allowed if you claim to be engaged in “observational comedy” and the much more limited set of facts you are permitted to use when seriously analyzing how the world works. That’s a big reason America has better comedy than public policy.

Where Young went wrong was in acknowledging black resentment against the small store owners prevalent in the community.  This is, as we are ritually required to declare to one another, terrible racism, which tends to reinforce my impression that when someone says “racism” he means “talking about ethnicity and race as if they existed and mattered.” 

If he talked about the exact same reality and cast it in terms of improved efficiency, higher quality and better service–deeply important principles that all Americans will understand and embrace–rather than community resentment at the ethnic merchants who are seen as profiting somehow unfairly at the expense of the community, the partisans of Wal-Martification (or is that Wal-Mortification?) would sing the man’s praises.  Of course, he was talking about Wal-Mart’s relative service and quality while he referred to this resentment, but he made the mistake of expressing that resentment in terms of ethnicity–had he simply talked about greedy storeowners, exploitative businessmen, quite a few people would have nodded their heads approvingly.   Instead of receiving the hosannas that libertarians routinely offer up to the ones whom Scott Richert calls “The Lords of Bentonville,” he has received mostly calumny for saying things that seem to be substantially true. 

Certainly, as a corporate rep he should have learned to use the weasel language that professional sports management has mastered when it comes to talking about race; local Chicago sportswriters could give him a lesson in how to feign mock outrage at the slightest inappropriate slip of the tongue related to such sensitive topics; the anti-prejudice brigades, once they have finished disembowling Mel Gibson, will be along shortly to straighten out Mr. Young.  The maintenance of anti-prejudice does bear some considerable resemblance to religious purification laws, and the verbal assault on Mr. Young is a sort of rhetorical stoning.  Someone rather famous said something about who should cast stones, and something else about judging, but when it comes to the ritual public show trial and punishment of a deviationist these teachings seem to fade into the background.  

The rest of Mr. Sailer’s article happens to point to two important things about Wal-Mart: Wal-Mart is most beneficial to and most welcome in those areas that have no strong sense of community and, arguably, it benefits from the social fragmentation and ethnic resentments encouraged by mass immigration.  It is thus an ideal company for the world of the atomised Open Borders man.