Posted on 05/19/2005 3:23:27 PM PDT by DumpsterDiver
Five days after President Vicente Fox provoked a storm of outrage in the United States by saying that Mexican migrants do work that "not even blacks want to do," the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson said in a visit to Mexico on Wednesday that he welcomed the remarks, in a backhand sort of way.
"President Fox has opened a door," Jackson said in an interview. "Just like the bus driver who put Rosa Parks off the bus. He opened a door for us to talk about the system of denial."
By that Jackson seemed to mean that Fox's statement, which he characterized as "offensive" and "inaccurate," would force Mexico to give African-Americans a place in its negotiations with the United States on issues of immigration, trade, education and health care.
"In late years, we have been locked out of these conversations," said Jackson, who was here at the invitation of Fox. "It's been only President Bush and President Fox."
Perhaps the greatest denial, however, has been here in Mexico, where there is usually very little public examination of race, much less racism. Here, too, Fox seems to have opened a door, and this week the country seems engrossed by it.
Mexicans typically pride themselves on being a colorblind society of mixed-race people, part Spanish, part Indian, and everyone equal. Slavery was abolished here decades before it was in the United States. Mexico never adopted anything like Jim Crow laws, and thousands of AfricanAmericans moved south of the border to escape segregation.
But some commentators said that Fox inadvertently exposed the disturbing reality beneath the facade and forced Mexico to take a more honest look in the mirror. The truth, said many observers on the radio and in newspaper columns this week, is that Fox's comments were not uncommon among Mexicans. They would hardly raise an eyebrow at dinner tables and cocktail parties.
'INVOLUNTARILY' RACIST
A columnist for the Mexico City daily Reforma, Guadalupe Loaeza, wrote Tuesday that Fox's remarks reflected what she called an "involuntarily" racist attitude. "He was educated like millions of Mexicans, conscious of having been born white, and that it makes him very different from those who are born with dark skin."
Audiences here still get a laugh from performers in black face, or newspaper cartoons that show Africans drawn more like apes.
Mexico's 10 million Indians are not only last in almost every social indicator, including levels of literacy, infant mortality, employment and access to basic services. They still appear on television mostly as maids and gardeners. Descendants of the African slaves who landed on Mexico's Gulf and Pacific coasts have been all but forgotten by governments and scholars alike.
This week, for the first time in recent history, the Mexican government published the results of a survey on the broader topic of discrimination. Josefina Vásquez Mota, the minister of social development, called the findings a "crude, painful and startling" picture of Mexican reality.
Vásquez said that some 40 percent of the people surveyed said they would not want to live next to an Indian community. Nearly one out of three considered it normal that women do not earn as much as men. More than 20 percent said that women were less able than men to fill important jobs. And one out of four said they believed that women were raped because they provoked men.
There was some hopeful news in the survey. It showed, for example, that eight of 10 Mexicans felt that eliminating discrimination was as important as ending poverty.
"We have before us," Vásquez said, "a photograph of a society moving between the remnants of authoritarianism and intolerance and, on the other side, a new culture that is more inclusive and tolerant."
The poet Benito Taibo said he found confusing contradictions in Mexico's attitudes about class and race while working recently on a television series about Mexico's exile communities. Since the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1917, he said, this country has welcomed wave after wave of exiles, including Spaniards, Jews, Chileans and, most recently, Indians from Guatemala.
More than 80,000 Indians settled in southern Mexico, Taibo said, with the full support of the Mexican government.
'INVISIBLE'
"We gave them refuge," Taibo said, "and we still have not given refuge to our own Indians. They live in a kind of undeclared apartheid. Our Indians remain invisible." And then, referring to the 1994 Indian rebellion in the southern state of Chiapas, he added, "When our Indians try to make themselves seen, we kill them."
Jennifer Clement, also a poet and author, wrote one of the only Mexican novels whose protagonist is a maid. To write the book, Clement interviewed at least 30 Mexican maids, and she recalled that they often connected their skin color to their lot in life.
Clement remembered finding lemons in the maids' depressing service quarters. The women, she said, rubbed cut lemons on their skin to try to lighten their complexion.
When asked whether she thought Mexico was a racist country, Clement recited the opening line of her novel. It is her own interpretation of the voice of the average maid.
"I am darker, much darker than the rest, and so they call me 'Fly.' "
"In late years, we have been locked out of these conversations," said Jackson, who was here at the invitation of Fox. "It's been only President Bush and President Fox."
As if Fox & Bush want input from any of the rest of us. Good luck to you, Jesse.
somehow, somewhere, Jesse will have an "immigration" business startin up pretty soon.
What would he name it ?
HA...."dialogue" to Jackson, means.....Yo! Brotha!....MONEY TALKS!
Given people's sensitivities and all, I doubt if he'll use the Spanish word for black in the title.
When asked whether she thought Mexico was a racist country, Clement recited the opening line of her novel. It is her own interpretation of the voice of the average maid. "I am darker, much darker than the rest, and so they call me 'Fly.' "
Maybe Jesse could use this:
"I am darker, much darker than the rest, and so they call me 'Super Fly.' "
But if Bush really wanted to get back at Fox, he should appoint Jesse as an ambassador without portfolio to Mexico to clean up their racial bigotry. Without the ACLU it won't be as much fun, but he could stay there for years generating headlines back home. He'd need a large life insurance policy, but think of the publicity!
I don't think "their" racial bigotry is anywhere near the level of "ours." I'm not defending bigotry (or, Jesse Jackson, or Vincente Fox), but in Mexico -- where people have been intermarrying for centuries -- there's really not much concept of "race." No governmental or other form ever asks a person about it ("Indigenous" is defined by linguistic counters, not "racial" ones).
The big problem has been that Fox pointed out (correctly) that Mexican workers are doing the crappy jobs no American can afford to take... true enough. And, he used the standard Mexican term "Negro" to describe dark-skinned people (used in Mexico not only to mean people of African descent, but those darker than others). The big question here is why Fox -- the president of a sovereign nation -- met with a private citizen of another country over something that had already been handled through diplomatic channels.
Fox comes out the "loser" in this encounter.
"Dialogue," huh? Sounds like Jesse's gettin' paid again.
"Jackson: And here's a bank deposit slip to my saving account President Fox."
That's not what I'm getting out of the article.
In the quotes I've read, Vicente never added on "jobs no American can afford to take".
One Extotionist trading techniques with another Extortion Artist.
Has Jesse Jackson ever worked a day in his life? How many illegal aliens are needed in Chicago to do the work even Jesse won't do?
I just sent this letter to Vicente Fox and to La Opinion in L.A.:
Querido Señor Fox,
No nos diga cómo conducir nuestro propio país, Vicente. Los Estados Unidos de América nos pertenece a nosotros, no pertenece a Ud. ni a los Mexicanos pobres que manda aquí.
Ellos no son "trabajadores sin documentos." Son ILEGALES. Son invasores. Han violado nuestra frontera sin permiso, y están viviendo y trabajando aquí ILEGALMENTE. Si quieren vivir y trabajar aquí, deben solicitar permiso por medio del proceso LEGAL de inmigración. Somos una nación de leyes, y los ilegales no respetan a nuestras leyes. No merecen quedarse aquí.
¿Qué me pasaría si yo entrara a México sin permiso, y si yo tomo un trabajo que "no hará ningún mejicano"? Claro. Me echarán en la cárcel.
Vicente, Ud. es un sin vergüenza y un enemigo de los Estados Unidos de América. Estamos viviendo en una época de guerra. ¿Cómo se atreve decir Ud. que no tenemos el derecho, como un país soberano, de defender nuestra frontera? Arregle a su propio país y economía, en vez de mandar acá a sus necesitados.
Sinceramente,
Los CIUDADANOS de los Estados Unidos de America
Nice work! Maybe you could also CC it to Congress, the White House and every Mexican consulate here in the U.S.
I'll keep an eye out to see if La Opinion prints it. :-)
I don't one bigot can teach another bigot sensitivity, do you?
LOL. I hadn't thought about it that way. Maybe they can just split a beer and call it even.
I must have writer's dementia. I missed "know what" in that statement.
Jackson will want to know if any black people were exploited to make Mexican beer. :)
Jackson is a pro shake down artist. He does NOTHING unless there is $$$ in it for him.He cares as much about black people as the man in the moon.He cares about $$$ PERIOD. I had the pleasure of refusing to shake his hand one time a few years ago. My liberal NY City friends were shocked and dissapointed in me .
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