Marty Peretz said the following about Mexicans last week on The New Republic website:
Well, I am extremely pessimistic about Mexican-American relations, not because the U.S. had done anything specifically wrong to our southern neighbor but because a (now not quite so) wealthy country has as its abutter a Latin society with all of its characteristic deficiencies: congenital corruption, authoritarian government, anarchic politics, near-tropical work habits, stifling social mores, Catholic dogma with the usual unacknowledged compromises, an anarchic counter-culture and increasingly violent modes of conflict. Then, there is the Mexican diaspora in America, hard-working and patriotic but mired in its untold numbers of illegals, about whom no one can talk with candor.
To which Ta-Nehisi Coates replied on his blog at The Atlantic:
I think a racist would claim that Mexican society is “congenitally corrupt.” I think a racist would disparage “sub-tropical work habits.” (There would be no slaves in the past, and no construction workers in the present without those habits.) But it takes a fucking racist to say all of that,and then assert that “no one can talk with candor” about illegal immigrants. Understand the difference–the racist simply argues that you are less than. The fucking racist argues he isn’t allowed to say you are less than, right after he’s said as much. The former deserves a dis track. The latter, only half a bar. Which means, I’ve already said too much.
Abagond 