MEXIFORNIA Victor Davis Hanson

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MEXIFORNIA Victor Davis Hanson

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racial rubrics like those of the old Confederacy, backed by new-age
genetic tracking, to figure out who exactly is “a person of color”—
one-third, one-half or one-sixteenth nonwhite blood?

In any case, money has always eventually trumped race in

America. The truism that race matters above all is forgotten when
people of color earn more or become better educated than white
people, but it returns with a vengeance when they remain isolated,
poor and dependent. For all our boutique hatred of the moneyed
classes, we accept that American plutocracy is a far more fluid
system of opportunity than entrenched European or Asian hier-
archies of class, color, ancestry and education. In sum, that racism
has been a factor in the Mexican experience is indisputable; that
in the present world of integration, intermarriage and government
subsidy it still largely explains the disappointment and failure of
millions of aliens is false.

Mexico City

Few observers of the immigration fiasco wish to talk honestly
about the complex nature of Mexican society and the interplay
there between race and poverty. Forget that the country is as poor
as India and as chaotic as Zimbabwe, and far closer to us than
either. There is something about the Mexican government that
lies at the heart of the immigration mess—especially its passive-
aggressive attitude toward the United States and its intellectually
dishonest approach to the immigration problem.

Overlook for a moment that Mexico has never had any real

history of sustained legitimate government, and only recently
has taken the first steps in creating a multiparty system with
free elections, an independent judiciary and an open media. And
that its professed worries about its own citizens coming north
to be exploited by American agribusiness resulted in a transi-
tory policy of containment that was never really enforced and
was largely ignored. Instead, the key to understanding Mexico’s
perplexing attitude toward America is simply found in Thucy-