July 19, 1978

Young's Remarks Shoot Down Human Rights

How ironic that the one thing President Jimmy Carter had going for him - human rights - should be shot down by Andy Young, a living example of the benefits that policy can produce.

Our black ambassador to the United Nations has long been afflicted with foot-in-mouth disease, a condition that causes more damage to the immediate family than to the carrier.

Young is the product of a generation of affirmative action and American freedom to develop individual potential to the fullest.

But he blew it on one too many snappy comebacks that delight militant blacks at the expense of enlightened whites.

It was a week to tread lightly.  The Soviet Union was in the midst of a farcical "trial" of Jewish dissidents, Anatoly Sharansky and Alexander Ginsburg, and Carter had chosen to make it a showdown on human rights.  Sort of like General Custer challenging Crazy Horse at the Little Big Horn.

At the same time Secretary of State Cyrus Vance was preparing to negotiate a strategic arms limitation treaty with Russian Foreign Minister Gromyko.

The last thing in the world any other prominent U.S. official should be doing was talking to a foreign socialist newspaper.  Yet there was Loquacious Andy in Paris competing for headlines in Le Matin.  He got 'em.

"How do you explain the opening of the trials of Sharansky and Ginsburg on the eve of the Vance-Gromyko meeting," asked the Le Matin reporter coyly.

Young replied, "Oh, it's certainly a challenge, a gesture of independence on their part.  But that will not prevent them from pursuing the SALT negotiations.  And, then, one doesn't know what can happen to the dissidents.  After all, in our prisons, too, there are hundreds - perhaps even thousands - of people whom I would call political prisoners.  Ten years ago, I myself was tried in Atlanta for having organized a protest movement.  And, three years later, I was a Georgia representative.  It's true that things do not change that quickly in the Soviet Union, but they do change."

This is, of course, a preposterous analogy.  Even in the darkest days of discrimination, harassment of blacks came from local social and criminal infractions - not from national politics.

It is one thing to complain of bigotry, quite another to charge the United States with tyranny.  There is a vast difference, and Young's ignorance of it is appalling.

Young's prejudice has gotten in the way of his judgment.  It is woefully out of hand.

A little farther along in the Le Matin interview, Young professed bewilderment at the massacre of Christian missionaries in Rhodesia by guerillas trying to overthrow the new black-white consensus government.  "I'm very skeptical when these massacres are attributed to Patriotic Front fighters.  I would say it was a planned attack on the missions that could come only from Prime Minister Smith's camp."

To charge Rhodesian whites with killing their own white missionaries is the wildest propaganda.  Joseph Goebels invented the technique when he excused the Nazi massacre of Jews not that many years ago.

It should be clear by now that Young's denouncements of civilized moderation and accommodation between blacks and whites are not mere slips of the tongue.  They are calculated insults that border on disloyalty.

In the short period he has been in office Young has (1) praised Cuban communists in Africa as "a stabilizing influence," (2) criticized his boss for "panicking" over the invasion of Zaire by Marxist rebels, (3) called the Swedes "terrible racists," and (4) declared the South African government "illegitimate."

The ambassador's remarks cut the ground from under Carter's foreign policies in every direction.  Such sabotage would not be tolerated by any other member of the president's staff.  Young feels secure in his blackness.  He has taken refuge in liberal guilt over ancient injustice.  The ploy is wearing thin.

Carter, for the first time, allowed his displeasure with Young to show, reprimanding him publicly.  Vance chewed him out in "unprintable" language.

A fellow Georgian, Democrat Congressman Larry McDonald, introduced an impeachment motion against Young.  The rest of the Democrats rallied to defeat the ouster, but a call for Young's resignation by Republican Congressman Robert Michael brought loud applause.

The so called Black Caucus - a group of Congressmen who meet privately to exploit their blackness - praised their mentor.  Congressman Parren Mitchell declared, "Ambassador Andy Young does have a fault - his fault is he is an honest and moral man attempting to tell the truth to a world which is immoral and dishonest."

More wild rhetoric.

It is a lie to equate the United States with Soviet repression.  Black Congressmen making such irresponsible statements freely in the halls of the national Capitol disprove themselves.

Young and the Caucus have set back human rights severely.  Russia and the rest of the totalitarian world are smug in Young's assertion of equal U.S. guilt.

The moral pressure Carter hoped to exert has been dissipated by a few cocky words from someone who is not honest enough to give due credit.

Author: Lindsey Williams