Narconews analyst Al Giordano’s insinuation that the release belies COHA’s malicious bigotry toward Mexico’s indigenous population relies on a highly selective and mean-spirited interpretation of the piece, which we have experienced before. We happen to enjoy reading Narconews, but we have found its editor to be a noisy and intemperate fellow who doesn’t quite realize that COHA is not the enemy, but a friend to most of the causes of that organization. For example, Giordano writes,

"People have always pushed Zapatista conspiracy theories that ‘someone must be behind those damn Indians.’ It is, essentially, a form of racism, one that believes that ‘the indigenous obviously could not organize themselves into such a potent force’ and therefore, by extension, there must be some white shadowy figure behind them."

Giordano is asserting that COHA’s researcher was part of this camp...

COHA then goes on to, essentially, admit to the facts of the charges while claiming that the perp had different motives...

Admittedly, there are instances in the piece where Lozano’s word choice can be construed to convey a slightly dismissive attitude toward the Zapatista movement... the accusation of underhanded racism is based on an unfair assumption of Lozano’s motive.

Ahem. Since when is suffering from "forms of racism" a question of motive? COHA seems very confused on this point. COHA seems to be saying that racist conceptions or attitudes are strictly defined by intent, rather than by (as in the case of such attitudes toward indigenous peoples) 500 years of social conditioning.

In COHA's world, there are apparently "racists" (others) and "non-racists" (them). This kind of self-centered discourse seems to always occur in liberal gringo circles whenever it is suggested that a preconception carries racism. The protagonist (in this case COHA) predictably takes it personally, and declares "how dare you call me a racist!" ("some of my best causes are black!") The implication is that they and they alone are immune to the internalized racism that surrounds them and their culture.

For example, they type from an office in Washington DC on Connecticut Avenue NW - where many liberal organizations are based - one of the few upscale white neighborhoods in a city that is 70 percent black. But they're immune to racist fears and and thoughts, right? Or so they seem to view themselves.

Related to this is the terribly thin-skinned notion, expressed above, that their critic "doesn’t quite realize that COHA is not the enemy, but a friend to most of the causes" that the critic (yours truly) and his newspaper supports.

Excuse me. Let me direct this to COHA director Larry Birns:

You don't have a clue as to what it would mean to be our "enemy." (Why don't you just search our pages for all the positive references to COHA reports we have made over the years? You think that's how an "enemy" gets treated around here?)

If you would like a clue, walk down K Street (it's not far - they're in the white neighborhood too) to the offices of narco-lawyers Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld - those losers who sued Narco News, Mario Menéndez and I on behalf of Banamex - and compare notes with those abogangsters about how we waged a fight to the death against them, with the rather mild (and as even you admit essentially true) critique that you earned from us. Akin Gump and its lawyers qualified as "enemies." You're just somebody with whom we disagreed and voiced that disagreement. Don't flatter yourself! We only take on enemies that are bigger than us, for starters...

It is an ever-predictable source of entertainment how thin-skinned writers and critics can be. We don't view the world that way. We enter "the public vortex" (that's a legal term I learned while at war with our enemies at Akin Gump) knowing and expecting that to be a critic means inviting criticism. Mr. Birns - we welcome, we really do, all your critiques of us today (and I personally welcome the ad hominem ones against me). I don't think that makes you my enemy. And you shouldn't be so paranoid as to think that when you receive a highly deserved critique, that it is about you.

But, then again, I think that is another form of racism (or at very least its cousin, ethnocentrism) that white folks in the United States feel free to take knowingly false whacks on the indigenous of Chiapas, and even after having to retract them as you did today, you think the debate is about you!

Now, take Jack the Ripper's crash course (it's free!) in confronting the racism within us all and go to the mirror and repeat after me: "It is not about me... It is not about me... It is not about me..." Say it enough times and you might start to chip away at this sense that you clearly have that you are more important than the Latin Americans your staff was writing about.

Racism is basic to all culture. We live in a racist society... wheeee! That's the fact. It is within you, Mr. Birns, and it is within me, and it is within Mr. Lozano from whom it spilled over. To suffer from racist preconceptions doesn't mean he sat down to write that screed and said to himself "and now I will do something racist." The most dangerous forms of racism are those that lurk in those who feel they are free of all racist thought and impulse. That's racism's petri dish, where it thrives and multiplies, in those recesses of the Western over-socialized mind and heart.

If you wake up each morning and say to yourself "what a good boy am I! I am not a racist!" you are inviting the devil in the door. And if you respond to an obviously honest critique that suggests your inner racist overflowed the borders of your keypad and spilled out in public by crying "but I am not a racist!" you clearly don't "get" the issue.

Here's a better idea. Take a longer walk, in the other direction, toward the majority black neighborhoods of your city of Washington, and do a little more soul-searching and consultation by asking the folks who live there, "hey, excuse me, but I have a question: Do you think it is possible that liberals suffer from racism too? Even if they strongly believe they are not racists?" I already know that the answer you will receive is the same as I am telling you here... because as a lad of 17, I would often venture out of the white university in Georgetown to visit at 14th and N (way back before it was gentrified) over at the Community for Creative Nonviolence's soup kitchen, and conduct this kind of "inner market research" by asking people with different pigmentation than me about how white folks behave around them. I got an earful that has served me well to this day. There is still time for you and your staff to do the same. Or, alternately, you and your staff could live for years in indigenous communities, as I and others have done, and get that healthy earful every day. But you don't need to go to that extreme: just walk up the street!

In sum: Only white people see the world as made up of "racists" and "non-racists." And see what a racist I am? I just made a statement characterizing an entire race (white folks!) Hey, at least I can admit it, and unlike you kids at COHA I don't think it's about me.

The response of "Mommy! He called me a racist!" is a sideshow, a way to deflect the real issues at hand, to avoid looking in the mirror and considering that what you justify as "a slightly dismissive attitude" toward the indigenous might, just maybe, reflect ethnocentrism, or, worse, the presence of the R-word deep inside your western socialized soul?

Strike Two!