Posted on 05/15/2005 6:22:42 AM PDT by tuffydoodle
Mexican president criticized for racial remark
By Morgan Lee
The Associated Press
MEXICO CITY - President Vicente Fox came under criticism Saturday after saying Mexicans were willing to take jobs "that not even blacks want to do in the United States."
Fox's remark on Friday came a day after Mexico announced it would formally protest recent U.S. immigration overhauls, including extending walls along the border and making it harder for illegal migrants to get driver's licenses.
"There's no doubt that the 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," Fox told a meeting of the Texas-Mexico Frozen Food Council in the western city of Puerto Vallarta on Friday.
The Mexican newspaper Milenio cited "Vicente Fox's racist comment" in a front-page headline, while the newspaper Reforma called the president's words "controversial."
The Rev. Jesse Jackson told CNN that the comments were "unwitting, unnecessary and inappropriate."
Fox issued a written statement Saturday night expressing his "enormous respect for minorities."
The president "laments and demonstrates his disagreement with interpretations that accuse his comments of being racist," the statement read. "The purpose of the remarks was nothing else but to make clear the importance that the Mexican workers have today in the development and progress of U.S. society."
"This is always a good one: I'm sorry you feel that way."
Just reading that made my blood pressure go up.
Al Sharpton for Mexican consulate!!
"you have such low self-respect that you'll take any stinky old job that someone will wave in front of you."
The wrong assumption MANY PEOPLE make is that "any old job" is beneath them and hold those who work in such fields(pun) in contempt. "Any old honest work" is better than pimping and whoring porn and drugs.
"At the other end of the spectrum, their leaders are all white Europeans who control 98% of the country's wealth."
True the Spanish never left Mexico.
if it were bush the rev would have called for a pistol whipping
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