So how do Mexicans view African-Americans?

While Latino critics in the United States have their hands full combating discrimination in the Star Wars movies (link via Glenn Reynolds), Latinos south of the border have a slightly bigger problem…. dealing with their own racial prejudices. Traci Carl explains for the Associated Press:

President Vicente Fox reversed course Monday and apologized for saying that Mexicans in the United States do the work that blacks won’t. Despite growing criticism that included a stern U.S. response, Fox had refused repeatedly to back away from the comment he made Friday, saying his remark had been misinterpreted. But in phone conversations with Jesse Jackson Sr. and Al Sharpton, Fox said he “regretted” the statement…. Fox agreed to set up a visit to Mexico by Jackson, Sharpton and a group of American black leaders. Many Mexicans hadn’t considered Fox’s remark Friday offensive. Blackface comedy is considered funny here, and many people hand out nicknames based on skin color. “The president was just telling the truth,” said Celedonio Gonzalez, a 35-year-old carpenter who worked illegally in Dallas for six months in 2001. “Mexicans go to the United States because they have to. Blacks want to earn better wages, and the Mexican–because he is illegal–takes what they pay him.” But Lisa Catanzarite, a sociologist at Washington State University, disputed Fox’s assertion. She said there is intense competition for lucrative working-class jobs like construction and that employers usually prefer to hire immigrants who don’t know their rights. “What Vicente Fox called a willingness to work … translates into extreme exploitability,” she said. Fox made the comment at an appearance in Puerto Vallarta: “There’s no doubt that 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.” The issue reflected Fox’s growing frustration with U.S. immigration policy. Even Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, the archbishop of Mexico City, had defended Fox’s comments: “The declaration had nothing to do with racism. It is a reality in the United States that anyone can prove.” ….While Mexico has a few, isolated black communities, the population is dominated by the country’s native Indians and descendants of its Spanish colonizers. Comments that generally would be considered openly racist in the United States generate little attention here. One afternoon television program regularly features a comedian in blackface chasing actresses in skimpy outfits while an advertisement for a small, chocolate pastry called the “negrito”–or little black man–shows a white boy sprouting an afro as he eats the sweet.

An intriguing angle about this story is the ability of Jackson and Sharpton to go global with…. that thing they do (though in this case they have a pretty valid point). Readers are heartily encouraged to predict the next world leader who will be required to mau-mau kowtow to Jackson and Sharpton for something they say. I think it’s a toss-up between Silvio Berlusconi and Vladimir Putin. [What about the “extreme exploitability” meme the sociologist is pushing?–ed. Some blogs are stressing that this is the important takeaway message from this story. But Tyler Cowen links to a paper by Berkeley economist David Card that concludes:

Does immigration reduce the labor market opportunities of less-skilled natives?…. Looking across major cities, differential immigrant inflows are strongly correlated with the relative supply of high school dropouts. Nevertheless, data from the 2000 Census shows that relative wages of native dropouts are uncorrelated with the relative supply of less-educated workers, as they were in earlier years. At the aggregate level, the wage gap between dropouts and high school graduates has remained nearly constant since 1980, despite supply pressure from immigration and the rise of other education-related wage gaps. Overall, evidence that immigrants have harmed the opportunities of less educated natives is scant.

Card also provides evidence that contradicts the Huntington thesis on Hispanic assimilation.] UPDATE: Brad DeLong objects to this post without saying why he objects. From his comments section, I gather it was my use of the phrase “mau-mau,” which some argue is a racially offensive term. Wikipedia backs them up (though they treat it as a noun and I used it as a verb) — so let me take the opportunity to apologize for using the term.