'Ain't no tragedy like a white tragedy'

No one disputes that social media has spawned a viral, hashtag-powered culture that turns us into instant mass sympathisers and mourners whenever tragedy strikes.

We are always #OneWithBarcelona, we always #PrayForLasVegas, we always #StandWithManchester. And when the occasion demands it #JeSuisParis, #IAmLondon, and #IAm _________ (insert European or US city here).

But where was the collective outrage when Mogadishu suffered the worst terrorist attack in Somalia's history, in which a truck bombing killed more than 300 people and injured another 200, around about the time the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal was hogging all the headlines?

Even Turkey got a hashtag when a gunman opened fire at revelers partying at an Istanbul disco at the beginning of the year, killing 39. #PrayforIstanbul, we all exhorted, shocked and saddened.

But Mogadishu? The story was lucky to even get a mention on the front page of Western newspapers. The silence was quite astonishing.

Weinstein, it turned out, tried his luck with everything that had a vagina in Hollywood, and we lapped up revelation after revelation. Not many office or dinner party conversations were started about Mogadishu, or Africa for that matter - except when Lupita Nyong'o shared her own Harvey horror story in the New York Times.

Otherwise, the unuttered, unshared hashtag may well have been #GoScrewYourselfMogadishu.

Ain't no tragedy like a white tragedy. Sexual harassment, and indeed rape, in Hollywood has been going on forever, but it really didn't become a thing until famous white actresses spoke out about their experiences with Weinstein.

As Jane Fonda observed: "It feels like something has shifted. It's too bad that it's probably because so many of the women that were assaulted by Harvey Weinstein are famous and white and everybody knows them. This has been going on a long time to black women and women of colour and it doesn't get out quite the same."

In fact, one of Weinstein's victims, an actress-model of Italian-Filipina descent, had gone to the New York City police.

They took her allegations seriously enough to ask her to see the Hollywood mogul again, wearing a wiretap, but in the end the district attorney declined to press charges. One wonders if the DA would have been more proactive if, say, it were Angelina Jolie instead of Ambra Battilana Gutierrez.

And if there had been white victims amidst the carnage in Mogadishu? Front-page news, no doubt. And we would all be #PrayingForMogadishu.

• This article was originally published in The Times.