Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Atlanta mayor, and Georgia lawmaker Andrew Young says the "coming war is a jobs war" — and that the winner will be the nation that can create jobs for its own citizens and its trading partners.
In an interview Thursday with "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth on Newsmax TV, Young, Atlanta has made gains in race relations because "we have worked on all of those things" that GOP nominee Donald Trump referenced in his promise to offer a "new deal for black America" in a speech in Charlotte, N.C. on Wednesday.
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"I worry about how we're going to keep this world peaceful, I worry about how we're going to generate jobs all over the world," said the author of the new book, "Andrew Young and the Making of Modern Atlanta."
"The coming war is a jobs war and the country that will be the greatest country will be the country that will create the most jobs for its own citizens, but also help its trading partners create jobs."
Young is optimistic.
"We're going to make it, no doubt in my mind," he said. "This country is headed, continuing to rule the world, lead the world, and we are the world."
According to Young, Martin Luther King, Jr. "never saw race as race."
"He said our problems are triple evils of race, war, and poverty," Young said. "I think he'd think we're doing very well on race, but where we have the problem is on poverty. We're making progress on wars. … We have found out that you can't kill your way to peace and prosperity. And I think that that's one of the big issues – that we can't force the world to be like us."
He added that his friendship with the late Republican congressman, Jack Kemp, proved sports helps heal racial wounds as well.
"Jack Kemp … played football, I was a football fan," he said. "But what I found was that Jack Kemp had probably the most sensitivity on race of any white boy I'd known. I said 'Jack, how come you are so sensitive to every racial indication anywhere?'
"He said, 'Andy, there were four big guys 275 to 325 pounds blocking for me. All of them happened to be black.' He said 'if I had a racist thought, all they had to do was let a shoulder go and the defense would clobber me. So it made sense, it was my job to be sensitive because my protection happened to be all African American.'
"And I think that sports has done that across the South. All across the nation."
Young touted Atlanta's business and racial success as based on cooperation.
Since the Civil Rights days in the mid-1960s, the black community and business community "worked together and they realized that we couldn't move the city forward trying to fight each other or keep one another down, but that if we could cooperate," he said.
"We began to globalize the economy of Atlanta in the '80s," he added. "During the eight years I was mayor, we brought in 1,100 companies from around the world that brought their businesses here but created jobs for the citizens of Atlanta."
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