Racist epithet hounds Fil-Am legal whiz

WASHINGTON – Philippine-born legal phenom Kiwi Camara, 22, was on track to become an assistant professor at George Mason University’s law school in Fairfax, northern Virginia when his candidacy was derailed because of his racist writing as a teenager.

Camara, who comes from Iba, Zambales graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2004 at 19, making him the youngest graduate in the school’s history.

But a racist remark he used in summarizing a Supreme Court decision has continued to dog him.

Wikipedia, the free Internet encyclopedia, said Camara in his first year at Harvard in 2000 referred in one of his writings to blacks as "nigs." He has repeatedly apologized for using the racist language.

"In the five years since he wrote the racist phrase, it has surfaced from campus to campus, job interview to job interview – a predicament that raises a broader question perfectly fit for these Google times: What’s the appropriate standard for judging a teenager years later?" The Washington Post asked on Friday.

Camara is currently teaching at the Northwestern University School of Law in Illinois.

In an interview with the Post Camara declined to say why he was no longer a candidate for the teaching position at George Mason? on the doorsteps of the nation’s capital. He said he did not mean to use the racist language as a law student and that it was an isolated instance.

"But I find it highly understandable why people continue to raise the issues… I think it’s perfectly appropriate for people to care what I did at age 16," he told the newspaper.

Camara and his parents emigrated to the US soon after he was born, moving first to Cleveland, Ohio and later transferring to Hawaii.

Camara said that he knows what it’s like being a minority.

"I have some experience with discrimination... I’m Filipino in the United States," he told The Record, a Harvard Law school newspaper, when the controversy involving him first broke out.