High life | 23 October 2010

It’s open season against whites over here. A couple of weeks ago, an 18-year-old freshman at Rutgers University jumped off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate, also 18, and a female student accomplice used a webcam to film him surreptitiously in a gay sexual encounter and send it to their closest thousand friends. Tyler Clementi’s body was fished out a week later, after the cheap laughs had subsided. Clementi was a top violinist and was studying music. He came from a closely knit family, which is obviously devastated.

The story made the news but the perpetrators were not treated as the monsters they are because — yes, you guessed it — Clementi was white and Catholic, while his roommate, Dharun Ravi, was from the subcontinent and quite brown. His accomplice, Molly Wei, is oriental. Clementi was shy, a top student and quiet. Ravi is a troublemaker and a wise guy, and the Chinese a dragon woman. I might be overcooking my case but I got the distinct impression that talking heads on TV and newspaper columnists did not share my outrage. The other way round would have been very different. The perpetrators would have been thrown into jail and the prosecutors would have demanded 20 years at least. (The university has not even suspended the ghastly duo.)

A bit further west, in Pennsylvania, things are different. In July 2008, a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old, both Polish Americans and high-school football players, had words with a Mexican while celebrating in a bar after a football game. Insults were exchanged and the Mexican was told to go back where he came from. ‘This is America,’ yelled the 16-year-old, Brandon Piekarsky. A fight began and the illegal Mexican was punched, fell to the ground and hit his head.