Vicente Fox: Still as Sensitive as Ever

Vicente Fox expressed the sentiment that Hispanics have an even greater resolve to succeed, by any means necessary, as they are willing to work in the same gutters African-Americans fought so hard to get out of. Well yes, but African-Americans do not work low paying jobs, not because they feel that they are too good to do so, but because a lot of us haven't necessarily had to either. I can't help the fact that illegal aliens find themselves in that situation once they cross over into this country but I have worked those low paying jobs that Vicente Fox believes that I think that I am too good to work, yet I am not going to continue to do so for any longer than I have to. At the same time, I am not going to attack him for having made the observation either. Perhaps Fox would like to see citizens of his own country in the same position as the African-American leadership of this country, and I cannot blame him for doing so, yet the implication that his own citizens have an even greater resolve to succeed than African-Americans, is ignorant, yet not necessarily racist. He is ill informed, to be sure, which should be the focus of the civil rights leadership in this country, because attacking him isn't anything that is going to help either of us right now when the discussion still needs to take place.

Yes we do aspire for the top positions of such leaders as "Kofi Annan, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice", as columnist Yuriria Sierra has suggested. However, this does not mean that we are ecstatic about working at McDonalds and Wal-Mart, however. I'm a bit confused as to how his comments were changed from the point of observation that blacks did not want to work low-paying jobs, to that of the implication that blacks are not capable of, or do not have the desire to pursue, high-paying jobs in which they can put their leadership qualities on display.

Without question, I am sure we would all like to be at the top, some of us aspire to be political leaders, and some corporate executives some of us would like to have other high-paying positions, to be sure. I am more appalled that these comments, while narrow and limited in their focus, are coming from the president of any country, more so than the idea that they would be racist. The larger issue isn't that of why, or how their president may be racist, than it is of Fox's indifference to our current policies to maintain control over our own borders. It appears that Fox is doing everything in his power to allow Mexicans to cross our border one way or the other, without regard to how employing illegal aliens affects our economy. If he believes that such Hispanics will take jobs that we do not want, so be it, because those are truly jobs that we do not want. However, regardless of what happens, it is not as if those coveted "high-paying" jobs that we are after, we are in jeopardy of loosing to Hispanics, or are we?

Vicente Fox's comments have ominous racial overtones, depending on how you look at it, but that it is it, overtones. Moreover, ominous to whom exactly? Fox is not the leader of this county, thank God (seeing how he ignorant he can come across at times). The dictionary describes ominous as being menacing, threatening, even evil. Yet, I cannot see exactly what is so evil about the idea that others see us in a light similar to that of which we see ourselves. I am looking for a better paying job right now because I do not think that I am getting paid what I am worth, in fact I always have done so, from when I started working over 15 years ago. The fact that someone else is telling me something that I perhaps do not want to hear, yet does in fact describe the way that I feel about myself, is not inherently evil. Fox's resolve to improve his own countries economy at the expense of ours, now that is evil, although it is not completely different approach from our own foreign trade policies, particularly that of corporations who exploit third world labor to sell overpriced goods here in the states.

We are angry because Vicente Fox reminds us that yes, again, we are not that far from the nightmares we've endured over 50 years ago in our struggles for equality. Yet some of us are living better than most, of any race, and that is something that no one can take away from us, regardless of whether or not others are indifferent about our resolve to do so. If Fox can convince those in positions of authority to take affirmative action away from America's minority groups then I will worry, but for now he is simply blowing a lot of hot air. Much of which appears to be lost on the free world anyway.