Unlikely though it may seem, Andrew Young, the embattled ambassador for social justice, is in a unique position to push forward a candid, searching conversation about race in America. Two weeks ago, when he inexplicably meandered into the territory of vile ethnic stereotypes, he revealed what we all know but rarely acknowledge: Bigotry is not the exclusive domain of any race or religion or region. Most of us -- a few saints excluded -- harbor ugly prejudices, unfortunate biases and harsh preconceptions.

Black Americans, too. Civil rights leaders, too. Preachers, too. Good Christians, especially. Knowing that doesn't lessen my disappointment in Young. Still naive enough to have heroes, I wanted to believe that he would know better than to wallow in the cheapest of the old canards about urban shopkeepers. But in one incomprehensible moment, he managed to insult Jewish, Korean and Arab merchants, claiming they have greedily exploited poor, black consumers.

A paid representative of Wal-Mart, Young was asked by a California newspaper about the huge retailer's tendency to force out smaller shops. His response was startling in its wrongheadedness:

"But you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us -- selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. . . .

"I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans, and now it's Arabs. Very few black people own these stores."

After the comments were published in the Los Angeles Sentinel, he quit as chairman of Working Families for Wal-Mart, and he has been apologizing ever since.

Young's long career in civil rights is just one reason his crude bigotry is so surprising. His upbringing was an unlikely incubator for that sort of prejudice. Young didn't grow up poor; his parents were not limited to shops that served low-wage consumers.

The son of a New Orleans dentist, Young grew up in a racially integrated neighborhood. In his memoir, "An Easy Burden," he described it as "a real jambalaya" of races and ethnicities.

And, as a lifelong member and, later, ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, he had opportunities to mingle with whites that weren't afforded to most black Americans of his generation. Not only did he attend the predominantly white Hartford Theological Seminary, but he also traveled to Europe as a young seminarian.

As a lieutenant in the civil rights movement, Young met many progressive whites -- college students, priests, rabbis -- who contributed money, planned strategy and marched alongside black activists, putting their lives on the line. He has no excuse for narrow-mindedness.

The worst thing about Young's offensive utterances was that they have given other black Americans, ordinary folk without his credibility or influence, an excuse to embrace bigotry. "I ask you, if you're over 30 years of age and lived in any urban area in this country and are black, does [Young's statement] not have the ring of our reality?" wrote James Welcome, publisher of Newsmakers, a black-interest Web site.

(I'm black and over 30, and this is what I've noticed: The poor are not well-served by any merchants. In down-at-the-heels neighborhoods, I've walked into large, chain-owned groceries with filthy floors and spoiled fruit.)

While black Americans are perfectly capable of harboring a host of prejudices, there has long been an especially obnoxious strain of anti-Semitism among us. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was forceful in attacking it.

"The segregationists and racists make no fine distinction between the Negro and the Jew," he said. And in a letter to Jewish leaders, he denounced anti-Semitism among blacks, saying, "I will continue to oppose it, because it is immoral and self-destructive."

But there are very few among the current generation of black activists who expose and criticize the prejudices that proliferate in black America --- from anti-Semitism to hostility toward Latino immigrants. We sometimes behave as if the frailties that plague every other group of human beings, including bigotry, have somehow passed over us.

Not so, as Young's transgressions have shown. So it's time to have a conversation in which we -- who have benefited when others acknowledged their prejudices toward us -- acknowledge our own. When he's finished apologizing, maybe Young will start that conversation.