Some American editorialists have howled that Mexico has a lot to learn about racial sensitivity. Maybe so, but Norteamericanos have much to learn from Mexico's experience, too.

On the positive side, today's Mexico did not emerge out of the burdensome racial baggage of the Yankees. It had different racial baggage.

Unlike America's system, enslaved Africans in Mexico could buy their freedom and give birth to children who were in turn free to marry anyone of any racial origin. Mexico abolished slavery decades before the United States and never enacted Jim Crow-style laws.

Mexican historian Enrique Krauze described Mexico's tradition of racial egalitarianism in a recent Washington Post op-ed essay. Famous Mexican leaders of African descent, he noted, included Jose Maria Morelos, who became the second commander of the Mexican rebels in their War for Independence in the early 1800s, and his immediate subordinate, Gen. Vicente Guerrero, who became president eight years after Mexico won its independence from Spain.

Since race had ceased to have much meaning in Mexico's mestizo - mixed ancestry - society, the country abandoned counting people by race in its national census decades ago.

But the downside of that willful colorblindness is that it contributes to the very real sense of invisibility felt by many black Mexicans. As Juan Angel Serrano, 41, a cattle farmer who heads Black Mexico, told Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent Hugh Dellios in Costa Chica, a region heavy with black Mexicans, "[Other Mexicans] just don't see us. People ask us where we're from. They say we can't be from Mexico."

The Memin Pinguin postage stamp has sold out and, happily for offended black folks, no further printing beyond the original 750,000-stamp issue was scheduled, in line with original plans.