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Analysts: Fox comment part of Mexico's attitudes

04:02 PM CDT on Tuesday, May 17, 2005


By LAURENCE ILIFF and LENNOX SAMUELS / The Dallas Morning News



MEXICO CITY – President Vicente Fox’s controversial comment about blacks in the U.S. is typical of a Mexico that fails to recognize its own racist attitudes, even as skin tone and economic success move in near lock-step, analysts said Tuesday.

In the official census, Mexicans of African descent aren’t even counted as a distinct group. White Mexicans dominate TV programs and advertising. Politicians have mostly light-brown skin or are white, like Mr. Fox, whose mother is from Spain.


Mr. Fox has been criticized by black and white leaders. “Racism is very deeply ingrained here but no one accepts it,� said Sergio Aguayo, a longtime human rights activist. “What Fox said was part of the language of all Mexicans. The paradigm of beauty is white skin and blue eyes.�

Of Mexico’s 105 million people, 80 percent are of mixed race, 10 percent indigenous and 10 percent white.

What Mr. Fox said was this: “There is no doubt that Mexican men and women, full of dignity, drive and a capacity for work, are doing the jobs that not even blacks want to do there, in the United States.�

Mr. Fox was speaking before a group of U.S. frozen-food processors in the Pacific Coast resort of Puerto Vallarta.

Since the comment was made Friday, Mr. Fox has been criticized by civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, former presidential candidate the Rev. Al Sharpton and by the Bush administration – through the U.S. State Department – for being insensitive to African-Americans.

Mr. Fox’s official spokesman, Rubén Aguilar, said the president had spoken by telephone with Mr. Jackson and Mr. Sharpton on Monday, “where he made it clear that at no time did the president have a racist attitude with this declaration.�

Mr. Aguilar insisted on Tuesday, however, that Mr. Fox’s comments were misinterpreted “by the press and the African-American community� and did not warrant an apology.

The president’s remarks may have been impolitic, but they were based on the truth, said Dr. Robert C. Smith, a political science professor at San Francisco State University.

He said Mr. Fox was alluding to the fact that black Americans are among the lowest paid people in the U.S. and that “even they� would not accept certain jobs at those wages.

“I think the president may have spoken a little inelegantly, but the substance of his statement was correct,� Dr. Smith said. “The massive number of immigrants has depressed the wages of low-wage workers, who historically have been disproportionately African-American.�

Mr. Fox’s words caused little outrage in Mexico, mostly because Mexicans are used to such talk.

“This is something he could say to me, something he could say privately, but not something a politician should say publicly,� said Jorge Añorve Zapata, an elementary school teacher and Afro-Mexican from the Pacific Coast state of Guerrero.

“Of course it’s racist, but the racism is implicit, it’s like a joke,� said Mr. Añorve. “He said it in an unconscious way, but he should not have said it.�

Mexico did import slaves from Africa and has Afro-Mexican communities in Guerrero, Oaxaca and Veracruz states. Mr. Añorve helps organize an “Encounter of Black Mexico� every year.

But to many Mexicans, “we are invisible,� said Mr. Añorve.
There has been more focus in the last decade on Indian rights, he added, but not much recognition of black Mexicans. “It’s like we are moving in slow motion on this subject.�

Mexico’s official census recognizes Indian groups and foreigners, but not Mexicans of African descent, something Mr. Añorve would like.
Some analysts, however, were not so hard on Mr. Fox.

“I could easily have said something like that in a lecture and had nothing come of it, because historically in (the United States) blacks have had to do a lot of the crap work,� said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington D.C.

“Fox is getting a bad rap, because while the remark is ridiculous, one should get indignant about the reality it addresses,� Mr. Birns said. “At the same time, it reveals what a goofball he is. It is placing blacks in a humiliating reference.�

On Tuesday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Mr. Fox’s recent comments on the subject were helpful. “I think that President Fox made a public statement regretting his comments. And I think he's addressed the matter.�