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?