[What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.]

“White people are the best thing that ever happened in the world,” a white man, gesticulating wildly and pumping his hands in the air, yelled at a group of people of color.

The young man, dressed in a blazer and button-up shirt, was hopping off the ground outside a Columbia University library early Sunday morning as he continued.

“We are so amazing,” he added as the students, some of whom were filming him with their phones, yelled back in outrage.

“I love myself,” his voice cracking as his screaming intensified, “and I love my people!”

In the backdrop of his racist tirade, Columbia’s campus in New York was mostly empty in the hours before dawn.