Fine! It's Racist!

Why is this my third or fourth post on this silly topic? Now Earl Graves (the man with the pork chop side burns) takes up where Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton left off. So, I give. Fox's remarks weren't insensitive. They were racist. Like most people in the Americas and the world, he views American blacks as being at the bottom of the economic and social totem pole. Keeping in mind the same bias he probably has against the darker/native Mexicans and those mixed with African blood, his remarks must have reflected his true thoughts. Now, was his mistake not singling out poor, "hood rat" blacks like Bill Cosby did? Or was it not mentioning poor whites or poor naturalized Mexicans and other minorities? I apologize if I seem dense but I just think this is the wrong freaking bone to pick! Graves wants blacks to cease giving Mexico our vacation business (sorry, but I was considering South America or Italy next chance I get to leave the states).

"Earl Graves, the 68-year-old founder of Black Enterprise magazine, says he's not a civil rights activist but a businessman.

In that role, he's urging African-Americans to take their vacation business out of Mexico in the wake of President Vicente Fox's comments that 'not even' blacks want the U.S. jobs taken by Mexican immigrants.

'I don't think it was insensitive; it was racist,' said Mr. Graves in an interview in Dallas, where he opened the 10th annual Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference.

Mr. Graves first made the remarks in his opening speech Thursday morning to a gathering of about 2,000 well-heeled conventioneers at the Wyndham Anatole hotel.

That night, he says, he was on the phone talking strategy with a variety of black leaders, including civil rights activist Julian Bond and the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

'We want to create some sensitivity in terms of the African-American market and respect for us as citizens,' Mr. Graves said.

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson met with Mr. Fox in Mexico City on Wednesday, and Mr. Fox is expected to be on Mr. Jackson's radio show Sunday."

Via blackinformant.com, this black Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist isn't hearing the Jackson/Sharpton/Graves cries either. What really gets me is that throughout college (and even for a year after graduating), I worked minimum wage jobs. I was a gift wrapper in a store, worked at KFC for double shifts, slung hash and bussed carts in the dorm cafeteria. Had I lived in a farming area, I would have been hard pressed not to take a job picking fruit if it put money for books (and cute clothes) in my pocket for the next semester. So, I don't really understand the mentality that permeates, not just blacks, but Americans in general.

Data from the 2004 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' population survey show that in service occupations, 18% of maids and housekeepers are African-Americans, compared with 38.2% for Hispanics or Latinos; 8.5% of grounds and maintenance workers in the U.S. are African-American, compared with 40.2% of Hispanics or Latinos; 17.8% of janitors and building cleaners in the U.S. are black, compared with 26.8% for Hispanic or Latinos; and 11.5% of workers in food preparation and serving-related occupations are African-American, compared with 19.3% for Hispanics or Latinos.

And those are the jobs that are on the books.

"By and large, African-Americans don't want this kind of work," says Clayborn Benson, founder and executive director of the Wisconsin Black Historical Society and Museum, 2620 W. Center St. "What Fox is saying is true. You hear it in the form of black kids who say, 'I don't want to work at no McDonald's' or they don't want a minimum wage job."

White Americans aren't exactly lining up for such jobs either.

But African-Americans aren't high enough up the economic ladder to make the same choices. If you're on the bottom rung, then you've got to climb the ladder in stages, which means you might have to work at a job that you don't enjoy and for lower wages. It's a start; you don't have to stay there.

When you consider the high unemployment rate among African-Americans in metro Milwaukee - 17% - and that 60% of black males in Milwaukee's central city are jobless, the question becomes: Should African-Americans be rejecting work that once played a fundamental role in their very survival and progress in this country?

Read the entire article because it basically reflects my take on the situation. I do have to laugh at one part because sistahgirl didn't have to go there:

Don't get me wrong: It's not that African-Americans aren't willing to work hard, but that many operate in an underground economy where they hustle in different ways to make money - from panhandling to selling goods on the street - vs. working in the mainstream economy.

Consider the growth of the "bootleg" DVD business. You can now purchase a bootleg movie on DVD in the central city faster than you can buy a regular DVD at a video store. How many of us know a back-alley mechanic in the "hood" who can repair just about anything on an automobile for half the money that a bona fide mechanic charges?

Then again, maybe she did.