Mexico City – President Vicente Fox, the champion of Mexican migrants, is taking to the airwaves to convince Americans he isn’t racist.
An interview on U.S. civil rights activist Jesse Jackson’s radio program Sunday will be Fox’s first public comments about a firestorm he ignited a week ago by saying Mexicans take the U.S. jobs that “not even” blacks want.
The statement roiled already- tense relations between U.S. blacks and Hispanics and angered the U.S. government.
Fox spokesman Ruben Aguilar said Friday the president is trying to “move on” by talking publicly with Jackson about ways to bring the communities closer to fight together for their civil rights.
But moving on may be hard to do. Another activist, Al Sharpton, is demanding that Fox apologize when the two meet Monday in Mexico City.
“I don’t think we’ve heard a formal apology from him,” Sharpton told The Associated Press on Thursday. “I think we’ve heard some regrets. I think we need an unequivocal apology. This was an unequivocal insult.”
Aguilar brushed aside that demand, saying Friday: “We don’t have anything more to say on this point.”
The closest the administration has come to apologizing was when Assistant Foreign Secretary Patricia Olamendi said Tuesday that “if anyone felt offended by the statement, I offer apologies on behalf of my government.”
But the next day Aguilar said Olamendi was speaking on her own behalf, not for the government.
Fox’s comment unveiled to the world Mexico’s obsession with skin color, which dictates people’s status in society in a way few Mexicans are comfortable discussing.
Blacks aren’t the only group that suffer from discrimination in Mexico. In a country where much of the population is of mixed Spanish and Indian ancestry, people often refer to one another with nicknames based on skin tone, and Indians are overwhelmingly poor with little access to education.
Other minorities are fair game as well. During the World Cup soccer tournament in 2002 in Japan, television ads poked fun at Asian culture by having people pull on the corners of their eyes.
Sharpton said it is time to have “a real discussion about race” with Fox.
“Things have been boiling under the surface for a while, and they need to be discussed, and frankly he can do that,” Sharpton said.
Since taking office in 2000, Fox has made improving the rights of Mexican migrants in the United States one of his top priorities, and he has pressured President Bush to approve an accord that would allow more Mexicans to cross the border and work legally.
But Fox, already seen as a lame-duck president before elections next year, has been lampooned in the Mexican media.
The Reforma newspaper published a cartoon Tuesday of Fox in blackface, exclaiming: “What more can I do so that they don’t call me a racist?”
