Hollings Remark on African Leaders, Cannibals Assailed

A remark by Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) comparing African leaders to cannibals was just the latest in a series that have angered minorities and made even his supporters cringe.

The most recent came when Hollings, who is white, criticized African diplomats who traveled to Switzerland for international trade agreement talks concluded Tuesday after years of negotiations.

“Everybody likes to go to Geneva,” he said Tuesday in Washington. “I used to do it for the Law of the Sea conferences and you’d find these potentates from down in Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they’d just come up and get a good square meal in Geneva.”

Black leaders protested, and some white Democrats were embarrassed.

“The man is mentally sick. As an African American, I condemn him for making those kinds of accusations against leaders of African nations,” said William Gibson, a Greenville dentist who is chairman of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

“Sen. Hollings has a unique way of expressing himself,” said Don Fowler, a state Democratic Party leader. “It would serve him better to think through some of these things.”

Hollings’ spokesman, Andy Brack, said the senator was only trying to emphasize that the trade agreement would hurt the textile industry. “He made a joke and that’s it,” Brack said Wednesday. Hollings declined to comment.

Last year, Hollings created a stir when he responded to a Japanese official’s comments about American work habits. He reminded Japan that the United States built the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.

“You should draw a mushroom cloud and put underneath it, ‘Made in America by lazy and illiterate Americans and tested in Japan,’ ” Hollings said.