Mexico's black community demands apology over stamps

[Virginiamama]

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/3252403

July 4, 2005, 10:40PM

Mexico's black community demands apology over stamps
Reuters News Service

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's tiny black community demanded Monday that President Vicente Fox apologize for a set of stamps featuring a black comic book figure that U.S. civil rights groups have slammed as racist.

The Asociacion Mexico Negro, which represents some 50,000 blacks living on the Pacific coast, said in a letter to Fox that Memin Pinguin, a 1940s comic book character drawn with thick lips and a flat nose, was stereotypical and racist.

"Memin Pinguin rewards, celebrates, typifies and cements the distorted, mocking, stereotypical and limited vision of black people in general," the letter said, signed by leaders of the association.

The letter marks the first official complaint from a Mexican group over the stamps, which went on sale last week and provoked a storm of controversy in the United States.

Fox has said the stamps are not racist and ignored calls to pull them from circulation.

"The stamps are 101 percent offensive, there is no doubt about it," said Rev. Glyn Jemmott, a Catholic priest in the 98 percent black village of El Ciruelo in Guerrero state, and one of the signatories of the letter.

"What is evident is the level of tolerance of racism that exists in the country. We are accustomed to racism to the point where anyone who dares question it runs the risk of being considered unpatriotic," he said by telephone.

[good12me]

I'm personally outraged that Jesse Jackson has not asked for an apology. He has come out and said that it is okay about the stamps and that they should be looked at like the comics they portray.

Let them release some like that here in America and see what the man says!

Where's Al Sharpton in all this? Can't believe his big mouth has remained closed throughout this mess.

[Virginiamama]

Al hasn't been quiet, he is ticked! He refered to them as "Sambo" Stamps.
Jesse Jackson has no validity in the black community, from what I understand.

[Sixx]

I'm personally outraged that Jesse Jackson has not asked for an apology. He has come out and said that it is okay about the stamps and that they should be looked at like the comics they portray.

Let them release some like that here in America and see what the man says!

Where's Al Sharpton in all this? Can't believe his big mouth has remained closed throughout this mess.

Sharpton and Jackson I can understand. They are bought and sold by the highest bidder and these poor blacks in Mexico can't affford the toll.
Judge Mary Helen Hicks in Ft. Worth, Texas was all over this on her show Sunday morning. She says she will NEVER spend another dime in that country. Sadly enough, there are hundreds if not thousands of blacks from America there RIGHT NOW that either don't know or don't care. How about liberating the blacks in Mexico, Jorge?