Some of my best friends are black

Two days after prime minister Andrus Ansip assured Doudou Diene - the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia and related intolerance, himself from Senegal - that although racism is not unknown in Estonia it is denounced at the highest levels comes news of yet another local attack on a black student.

"Racism is condemned in Estonia in the strongest terms," Ansip said, adding that Estonia has been a cultural melting pot throughout its history, and remains so today, with 120 different nationalities represented in the country. "And the state will do everything it can to ensure that Estonia is a good home for these minorities in the future, too."

He and his government might want to concentrate on the present, though: September has seen another black student attacked by nationalist skinheads in Tartu, the educational heartland of the nation and self-proclaimed 'City of Good Thoughts' (which, given a better translation of heade mõtete linn would be 'city of good ideas', makes me wonder whether the irony is lost on them in any of this).

Ansip would praise Eesti Päevaleht Offline for the censorious line they take on the matter: "It goes without saying that the idiocy of considering someone lesser than yourself purely on the basis of the colour of their skin should have no place in a civilised society. One black student is worth a million times more to Estonia than a gang of narrow-minded, egg-headed, fatherland-venerating high school dropouts.

"Why, you're asking? But let me ask you: did this student come to Estonia to live it up on the generous unemployment benefits? Or because of the thousands of euros he could stuff his overalls with in some blue-collar job? Or so he could hijack a plane from Raadi airfield and fly it into Tartu's one and only highrise tower? No. He came here to get an education. A foreigner came to Estonia to get an education! That's a real I bow to you to the people who have managed to build up the kind of educational institutions that entice people to come here to study from far-off places. But if they're subjected to a hail of stones as soon as they get here, all they'll take away with them is a view of Estonia as some tiny, backward, xenophobic state."

Of course, if it weren't for the skinheads, they would never get that impression.

http://www.postimees.ee/260907/esileht/siseuudised/285521.php

http://www.epl.ee/artikkel/401839