Over the past week, the dialogue around the gang-rape of a 15 year-old girl at her high school’s homecoming dance has evolved into a lot of the tropes we are so unfortunately familiar with. At Broadsheet, Tracy Clark-Flory points to the victim-blaming and racist comments made about the case as collected at Helpful Comments. Some revolting examples:

• wait wait wait…..she was drinking prior to this? hmmm. im not sayin its her fault or she deserved this or anything but shes 15 and drinking outside on a bench by herself in a dress….as much as people want this to be a perfect world, its not. what she was doin in the first place was asking for trouble. if your not gunna be smart about the choices you make, im not gunna feel bad for what happens. it sucks she was raped and she will never forget this and it will hurt her for the rest of her life, but come on lets be smarter than that.
• Black and Spic rapists, no white boys involved, Wanna bet?
• This has a lot to do with “Machismo” and the Hispanic culture. Scum like this MUST be forced to speak english and act like “Main Stream” American’s, or be sent back to thier hovels in Mexico!!

Meanwhile, over at RaceWire, Daisy Hernandez points to a CNN video where Richmond High junior, Kami Baker, a friend of the survivor’s, blasts the school for their lack of security, in general and at the dance.

The young white girl in this CNN video protests that school officials are not providing security at Richmond High School because its student body is made up of kids of color.

“We are ostracized [by school officials] because of our race and our minorities,” says Kami Baker, who claims that a high school she previously attended had lots of security guards because its student body was mostly white.

It’s hard to figure out what’s most disturbing about this video—Kami stumbling through tears and anger to make her points but ending on an enigmatic reference to Asian students or that a white student immediately jumps to the idea of checking the IDs of Latino men as the only way to feel safe or that CNN made no reference in its written report to Kami’s insistence that school security policies vary according to the skin color of students.

And indeed, it seems like the school has for a long time had some serious issues with safety, but it’s unsurprising that no one besides the students are talking about the potential discrimination behind the lack of security measures. The students are, after all, the ones who are feeling the effects of racism right now as they are bombarded with comments like those above, comments which only serve to foster racial more tension. It’s the students who folks should be listening to right now:

“Please tell people we’re not animals, like the media say we are,” Rhonnie said, eyes moist with pain. “We are not bad people.”

…But there was also anger from students who feel they’ve been unfairly portrayed by the media.

“We do care about the young girl that got raped,” says high school senior Norma Bautista. “We’re showing everyone that we’re not criminals, we’re not animals — we’re not who they say we are.”

Bautista says she has worked hard to get here — she’s the second person in her family who will graduate from high school. She is accustomed to challenges, and she says she wants people to know that students are mobilizing.

“What we decided here at school [is] to make workshops at our school for young men about domestic violence — and not just young men, but women as well. We’re here to better our school.”

Kudos to students like Norma who can take something this horrible and spin in into progress, and my thoughts are with the students at Richmond who, while processing this awful violence in their community, are forced to remind people that they aren’t “savages” or “animals.” Thanks to all of those who know that violence has no color and rape victims never “get what they deserve.” As Kami Baker also said, “People are saying it’s her fault because she got drunk. But that could have been me. They beat her up and no one did anything to help her.”

From the SF Chronicle: Donations for the Richmond High School rape victim may be sent to: Richmond High Jane Doe, account No. 041-30-1188, Mechanics Bank, 3170 Hilltop Mall Road, Richmond, CA 94806.

From Shakesville: Richmond High School is accepting cards and donations for the victim and her family, which should be mailed to the school at 1250 23rd Street, Richmond, CA 94804-1011. Checks should be made out to the Richmond High Student Fund, with “For sex assault victim” written in the memo line.