Check this one about Mexican president Vicente Fox.
A few people are up in arms about this, including Jesse Jackson. This really sounds bad, but if one word in his quote is changed to something almost–but not quite–synonymous, then this wouldn’t be a big deal.
Fox said, “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.”
Not pretty. Now, let’s change one word, which will be put in italics.
“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 are willing to do in the United States.”
Now how off-base is that?
It isn’t really unrealistic if you’ve ever worked in a restaurant in a city with a heavy Latino population. In high school in Houston, I worked at a gourmet burger chain. The most terrible, dreadful, shitty jobs were all populated by people that spoke not a lick of English. Need someone to take the fat buckets out back? Call Pedro. Someone vomited in the bathroom? Call Jose. Some gum needs to be scraped off the bottom of a table? Esteban must be summoned.
And the list goes on and on.
Everyone I went to high school that worked in similar establishments complained of the same thing. There are some terrible jobs in this world that must be done, and no one wants to do them. No one pops out of the womb with an innate passion for cleaning up after someone else’s excrement. Black, white, and all colors from ROYGBIV hate doing stuff like that. Absolutely hate it.
But some people just have to do it. It’s gotta be done, and rent has to be paid, which draws a lot of people into work that could easily be called dehumanizing…save for the fact that little is as dehumanizing as homelessness. Mexicans are just disproportionately chosen to do those gigs. Maybe black folks are unwilling to do those things–and history has shown black folks have a need for sustinence that has made us willing to do a lot of subhuman shit–and I wouldn’t blame anyone for being unwilling to do a lot of jobs if they’re able to find some other way to eat.
What Fox said, at least according to my initial analysis, is noting how terrible the work is that Mexicans are frequently forced to do, and that’s hard to argue with.
But wait…let’s look at this again.
“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.”
Is Fox really just discussing the hard working spirit of the Mexican people? You know, that typical salt-of-the-earth bullshit?
Looks like that from one angle. If that’s the angle, think about what he’s said here–Mexican people are so hard working that they’re even harder working than black people. The phrasing on this almost implies that he believes that working harder than black folks is a serious feat. If so, this is as much a dig at white folks as anything else.
Is that what it is?
I’m not really sure.
Should I go for the default answer–just somebody else talking bad about black folks to make his own folks look better?
It might be the right answer.
But I’m really not sure.
Lots of ways to look at this one. Pick whichever suits you. Don’t forget the one underlying point in all of this, though–Mexicans are asked to take the most terrible brands of work. That part is undeniable. The connotations of Fox’s statements are all over the place, but that fact is concrete and colossally problematic.
That’s the only concrete answer I’ve got for this one. Lots of questions, though. Questions like, “does anyone read over Fox’s speeches?” Had to be clear that one was a bad idea.
What about you?
12 thoughts on “Vicente Fox…is he really wrong?”
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WOW- something on Bomani’s site that helps me advance my research! YES!
I choose to interpret this as a dig at a class that i (affectionately) refer to as WP.
Mexicans are so hard working and determined for success in America that they are willing to take the jobs that even Black people will not take- Those jobs so grimy, so gross, so repugnant (yes, I said it) that even black people- who are unemployed and have been evicted, who are responsible for 4 hungry mouths besides their own, (feel free to paint a desperate picture at will here) do not consider!!! WOW. That’s one hardworking level above the stereotypic Jamaican! That person is determined to survive and to elevate his situation by any means necessary. (Un hun).
And not to sound racist or anything but, when is the last time you heard Ray-ray talking about going down to IHOP because they’re hiring janitors?
The President or Mexico is not wrong in his statement. He is simply alluding to the fact that black people are generally considered below every other race / classification of people on the American “good people” scale. Stating that Mexicans will take jobs that even the lowest Americans will not take is stating something for sure- that Mexicans are becoming the backbone of America- the hardworking, no recognition receiving people that keep Jim Bill and Ted from having to empty their own waste baskets, lest they earn a few dollars less per day for the Company X. By making it more difficult for Mexicans to enter and work in the USA, the federal government will be in essence creating a mess for corporate America. With janitors in limited supply, they can demand higher wages, health benefits, etc, ultimately causing corporations to have to expend much more money to employ these citizens than if good ‘ole Sammy just left things the way they are.
But that is what the federal government is good at, right? Causing problems? 🙂
I think the real question here is, 30 years from now, will Mexicans still be willing to work jobs that blacks are unwilling to work at today? I am a gambling man, and I am betting that they will not.
The presumed economic ladder of success has high expectations at the first rung, as one goes up, diminishing returns sets in. Throw in a few institutional barriers (e.g. racism, discrimination), and non-whites soon discover that all that is well, does not end well.
–Dismal Scientist.
I’m intrigued by the various scenarios that you economists have laid out, but I think this is another case of “hyping up” the work ethic of another group of immigrants. The (Mexicans,Asians, West Indian,et.al) are so much more industrious than you lazy niggas.
Let’s look at the economic realities here. If the immigrant comes from a job that pays $5/day in his native land, and goes to one that pays $5/hour in America, then he is on the come up!! You will work harder when you are on the come up.
Now if you take someone who is $15/hr in America, and you ask him to accept a pay cut to $5/hr, HE WILL BECOME LESS INDUSTRIOUS!!
The next generation, 30 years hence, will not work on these low pay crappy jobs. At that point, America will import some other class of the down trodden and make them the “new negroes”.
Hmm…I thought the word you were going to change was blacks to whites. Would that have been “less racist”?
First I would have to say ouch for el Presidente. That one will not ring well in black America, and it is America more than any other nation that can have an impact on Mexican politics. On the other hand, white America really controls America, and they are quite unlikely to give it more than two brain cells worth of thought.
As for the meaning of the statement… well, let’s face it, in the back of their minds everybody buys into stereotypes – because they come from what we see, and seeing is believing, no matter how much we consciously try to see no differences across color and culture.
That isn’t to criticize Jackson for getting involved; a statement like that really has no business coming from a head-of-state.
In the end I wouldn’t be concerned too much with Fox’s statement or Jackson’s response, I just would think that someone in the Fox camp is gonna hang for this.
I’ve never been to Mexico. And I can’t say that I know much about Mexico, save some trivia from Sinco de Mayo. So what I’m going to say is purely hypothetical. Or maybe I’m just really smart and I don’t realize it. Either way.
What if in Mexico, hearing the blunt truth out of a politician isn’t such a rare thing like it is here in the good ole US of A? Maybe they don’t tip-toe on race in Mexico like we always do, so that something that you could easily argue sounds bad is taken by its intended meaning rather than dissecting it for any words to bitch about, which is basically what we’re doing.
It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to know that racism in America exists and that historically blacks have been on the lowest rung of the economic and social ladder. It’s also pretty obvious that he was talking to Americans, because honestly, Jose Freshlyherez don’t care. Like has been stated earlier, anything is better than the money made in Mexico.
I think Mr. Fox is aware that, no matter how much better off immigrants are here than in Mexico, they’re still gettin’ the shaft. In Mexico, those people are considered “normal.” But here, they’re just barely considered people, judging by the fact that you never see any other group of folks waiting on the sidewalk every morning to make $20 for 8 hours of work with the sun leanin’ on their asses. So his making that statement is just calling out America for treating immigrants so poorly.
The sad part is that he’s right and I think he was right to say it the way he did. White, corporate America hears that there’s a group of people being treated worse than blacks and it shocks the shit out of ’em. Mr. Fox is trying to use that, to start a constructive conversation to try and fix the problem. But we’re Americans and the conversation that’s happened is dumb.
Well, I took issue with his use of the term ‘even.’ It purely suggests that Black folk are not only the lowest category of human being (and from his comment, far below his average citizenry) but furthermore, that it should be common knowledge for anyone (from anywhere) that may hear his speech!
To me, it raised questions about how he sees Black folk in his own country. There are plenty of Mexicans of African descent that make up the lowest rungs of the social/economic ladder in Mexico, although they seem to become invisible in daily news coverage or in casual/political conversation.
The bottom line is that his comment reflects a wide scale–if not ‘common knowledge’–disdain for Blackness that has become the hallmark for non-Western countries to mark their adherence to the Western social heirarchy. In essence, the further they are from ‘Black,’ then clearly the closer they must be to ‘white,’ or rather, worthy of economic relations and the sharing of social/political/economic resources. Although poorly stated, I think his comment had a purpose: establish Mexico’s whiteness (or at least distance from Blackness) and foster an international acceptance of Mexicans as non-Black workers who do not have the steroetypical values that Blacks do (laziness, criminality, etc).
I think Fox was trying to exploit a long running issue in American politics as a way of making his point and his argument “hit home” a little more with the average American who reads or hears about his speech. I don’t think that what he said was necessarily racist as much as he took a issue with a racial context and tried to flip it to his advantage.
But what hasn’t been mentioned is that he is a bit of a coward in how he did it. Despite the similarities that have been mentioned in re: the economic status of Black people and Mexican people in the U.S., Fox isn’t just speaking about Mexicans in the U.S. Mexico, and by extension, Fox, has the luxury of having a border, a set of laws, an Army, and an autonomous nation-state. All of these things give Fox a degree of insulation from the economic and political fallout of making such a statement. He can offend Black Americans all he wants with whatever he wants to say. Chances are, it’s not going to affect him a whole lot either way. Things would be a lot different if he were running for Mayor of Atlanta or setting policy as governor of New York, or whatever.
But, since he’s physically removed from the issue, he can say whatever he wants, because he’s got nothing to lose (politically or economically) and if he can affect policy or opinions in even the smallest way, he’s got everything to gain.
I disagree with Lord Amaru. My interpretation is that Fox’s statement does not attempt to place Mexicans closer to whites than to blacks. If anything Mexicans are positioned much closer to blacks than to whites. “Not even blacks want to” implies that it is the blacks who are generally poor and economically disadvantaged enough that maybe they’d want/have to do these jobs. But if they won’t, someone other group, who is just as much if not more economically disadvantaged, will – Mexicans.
I think it was just an honest mistake on Fox’s part. You can’t really hold it against him for harboring some personal stereotypes that most of us hold as well. I think if I were in a high politically position I’d have been caught a long time ago making some ignorant remark about white people (although you won’t catch me using the word “hymietown”).