Do you feel it is offensive to call Mexican farm workers, “illiterate peasants?”?

Colorado State Representative Douglas Bruce was kicked off of the podium after referring to Mexican farm workers as “illiterate peasants.”
Colorado is facing a serious shortage of people to work the state’s farms and lawmakers want to try a new, innovative program to grant foreign workers temporary visas to come to work on Colorado farms. Once the growing season is over, the workers would return to their home countries.

Representative Bruce argued against the program saying, "I'd like to have the opportunity to state at the microphone why I don't think we need 5000 illiterate peasants in Colorado." Fellow lawmakers found the comment offensive but Bruce refused to apologize for the slur and instead he tried to explain it like this:

“I looked up ‘illiterate’ in the dictionary and it means somebody who is lacking in formal education or is unable to read and write. I don’t think these people who are planning to come over here and pick potatoes or peaches are likely to have much of a formal education. I looked up the word ‘peasant.’ The word ‘peasant’ means a person who works in agricultural fields.”

On an AOL poll 57% of respondents were not offended by the comment while 43% found it offensive.

How do you feel about State Representative Douglas Bruce’s comment?