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. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People invited Fox to attend its July 10-14 convention in Milwaukee to explain himself, although it wasn’t immediately clear if he would attend. And activist Al Sharpton demanded 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. “I think we’ve heard some regrets. I think we need an unequivocal apology. This was an unequivocal insult.”

In this photo released by the Rainbow Push Coalition, Jesse Jackson, right, poses with Mexican President Vicente Fox, center, Wednesday as he holds a photo of Jackson with farm workers union leader Cesar Chavez during a photo opportunity with Ann Marie Tallman, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) at the Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City, Mexico. Fox and Jackson met after Fox said Mexicans take U.S. jobs that not

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.

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.