Discuss among yourselves. I’d say this says some interesting things about the racial attitudes in Mexican society…
I also find it interesting that we’re always so interested in hyperexamining the smallest indications that things aren’t perfect vis a vis racial relations in western societies, and the U.S. in particular, while in my experience the racial attitudes – and the violence that flows from them, including genocide – are all too real problems in “Third World” countries.
Mexico’s Fox sorry for race remarks
President expresses regret in talks with Jackson, Sharpton
By Traci Carl
Associated Press
Published May 17, 2005
MEXICO CITY – President Vicente Fox reversed course Monday and apologized for saying that Mexicans in the United States do the work that blacks won’t.
Despite growing criticism that included a stern U.S. response, Fox had refused repeatedly to back away from the comment he made Friday, saying his remark had been misinterpreted.
But in phone conversations with Jesse Jackson Sr. and Al Sharpton, Fox said he “regretted” the statement.
“The president regretted any hurt feelings his statements may have caused,” the Foreign Relations Department said in a written statement. “He expressed the great respect he and his administration [have] for the African-American community in the United States.”
Jackson told Fox that he was sure Fox had no racist intent, and suggested the two men meet to discuss joint strategies between blacks and immigrant groups in the United States, Fox spokesman Ruben Aguilar said.
Fox agreed to set up a visit to Mexico by Jackson, Sharpton and a group of American black leaders.
Many Mexicans hadn’t considered Fox’s remark Friday offensive.
Blackface comedy is considered funny here, and many people hand out nicknames based on skin color.
“The president was just telling the truth,” said Celedonio Gonzalez, a 35-year-old carpenter who worked illegally in Dallas for six months in 2001. “Mexicans go to the United States because they have to. Blacks want to earn better wages, and the Mexican–because he is illegal–takes what they pay him.”
But Lisa Catanzarite, a sociologist at Washington State University, disputed Fox’s assertion. She said there is intense competition for lucrative working-class jobs like construction and that employers usually prefer to hire immigrants who don’t know their rights.
“What Vicente Fox called a willingness to work … translates into extreme exploitability,” she said.
Fox made the comment at an appearance in Puerto Vallarta: “There’s no doubt that Mexican men and women–full of dignity, willpower and a capacity for work–are doing the work that not even blacks want to do in the United States.”
The issue reflected Fox’s growing frustration with U.S. immigration policy.
Even Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, the archbishop of Mexico City, had defended Fox’s comments: “The declaration had nothing to do with racism. It is a reality in the United States that anyone can prove.”
Earlier, Fox’s spokesman said Fox’s comments were in defense of Mexican migrants as they come under attack by new U.S. immigration measures that include a wall along the Mexico-California border, and were not meant to offend anybody.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City had raised the issue with the Mexican government.
While Mexico has a few, isolated black communities, the population is dominated by the country’s native Indians and descendants of its Spanish colonizers. Comments that generally would be considered openly racist in the United States generate little attention here.
One afternoon television program regularly features a comedian in blackface chasing actresses in skimpy outfits while an advertisement for a small, chocolate pastry called the “negrito”–or little black man–shows a white boy sprouting an afro as he eats the sweet.
Victor Hugo Flores, a 30-year-old bond salesman, cringed when asked what he thought of Fox’s Friday comment, but said it isn’t too different from popular sayings celebrating what Mexicans see as a strong work ethic among blacks.
“It was bad, but it really isn’t racist,” he said. “Maybe the president shouldn’t have said it. But here we say things like, `He works like a black person,’ and it’s normal.”