With California's Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante now leading in the polls to be the state's next governor, the silence about his anti-white past is thunderous.

Neither the mainstream press nor his comrades in the Democratic Party nor even most of his rivals in the election have mentioned it.

As for the professional witch hunters of hate like the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, not a peep has passed their usually over-worked lips. [VDARE.COM note: The SPLC has other targets!]

Yet Mr. Bustamante's past associations need explanation and, given the fashionable squalling about "racism," no small amount of simple repudiation.

He himself has refused both, and why shouldn't he refuse when no one else - especially those who make a profession out of denouncing "racism" and "extremism"—say nothing themselves?

The problem with Mr. Bustamante is that he is a past member of a student organization known by its Spanish initials as "MEChA," an abbreviation that stands for "Chicano Student Movement for Aztlan," "Aztlan" being the name of the country they plan to establish where the Southwestern United States now lies after they kick out or kill all the whites who live there.

Aside from its cultivation of a violent rhetoric that, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, ought to give most Americans pause, MEChA is pretty explicit about its anti-white agenda. Its statement of purpose, "El Plan de Aztlan," opens up with the sentiment,

"In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal 'gringo' invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlán from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility and our inevitable destiny."

That was enough for former Ku Klux Klan leader Tom Metzger, who endorsed Mr. Bustamante as a kindred soul last week and beamed of the statement, "If that isn't racist, I don't know what is."

Mr. Bustamante himself, despite repeated calls from various conservatives to renounce the statement and the group, simply refuses.

Indeed, he reaffirms the value of his connections with it.  "I think the actuality of what takes place in those organizations is to provide student leadership. For me, and many, many others, we were running for student government. That's how I got here today," he told WorldNetDaily recently.

The problem is not so much what Mr. Bustamante believes or the organization to which he used to belong. As I have long argued, Hispanic or Latino "nationalism" is really an anti-white racial nationalist movement driven by the mass immigration that the Open Borders lobby has forced upon this country, and Mr. Bustamante's affiliations with that movement and its beliefs shouldn't be surprising.

Conservatives who are just now blubbering about it should have sniffed the coffee years ago.

Mr. Bustamante's racial associations are more important for what they tell us about the whole business of anti-racism.

What they tell is that anti-racism really isn't about "racism" at all. It's only against "white racism."

Thus, both the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have said virtually nothing about Mr. Bustamante or MEChA, despite the latter's history of anti-Semitism.

The SPLC and its founder, Morris Dees, have been far too busy denouncing Judge Roy Moore in Alabama, while the ADL has been riding herd on such dangerous anti-Semites as actor Mel Gibson for his new film about the crucifixion of Christ.

No doubt these are far greater threats to racial harmony and civil rights than the prospect of an anti-white racial nationalist with ties to an organization with a history of anti-white, anti-American, and anti-Jewish beliefs being elected governor of California.

Nor do we hear much about Mr. Bustamante's past from our friends the neo-conservatives. Back in 1994 neo-cons Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett went out their way to denounce Prop 187, California's ballot measure that would have cut off most public services to illegal aliens, but we hear nothing from them today about the leading contender for the governor's chair.

Neo-conservative Linda Chavez found time to apologize for Arnold Schwarzenegger's support for Prop 187, but she too has been pretty mum about the past of his chief rival in the election.

For all of them "racism" is OK as long as its directed against whites. Then, you see, it's not "racism" at all but "passion," " sensitivity," "civil rights," or "multiculturalism."

"Racism" is not OK only when whites express it or even hint at it.

If the great experiment in multiracial democracy that is about to unfold in California should teach us anything, it is the transparent hypocrisy of "anti-racism" and the agenda for an anti-white power grab it conceals.

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[Sam Francis [email him] is a nationally syndicated columnist. A selection of his columns, America Extinguished: Mass Immigration And The Disintegration Of American Culture, is now available from Americans For Immigration Control. Click here for Sam Francis' website.]