Last Sunday night in Irving, Texas, a 14-year-old boy named Ahmed Mohamed got bored. But instead of firing up his X-Box for a few rounds of Counterstrike or checking up on his fantasy football progress, Ahmed decided to build a digital clock from scratch. He likes to tinker.
By now you鈥檝e probably what happened next: When Ahmed took his masterpiece to school the next day to impress his teachers, the clock was confiscated and Ahmed was pulled out of class. He was interrogated by five different police officers. His belongings were searched. He was threatened with expulsion. He was accused over and over and over again of wanting to build a bomb, or wanting people to think he鈥檇 built a bomb. He repeatedly requested to contact his parents, and those requests were denied.
Instead, law enforcement agents handcuffed the frightened high school freshman wearing a NASA t-shirt, frog-marched him out of school, and remanded him to a juvenile detention center where they snapped mug shots and took his fingerprints. The school suspended Ahmed for three days, and until the story went viral, police were considering charges.
How could this have happened?
The first and most obvious answer is racism and Islamophobia. Ahmed is Muslim, and Irving has something of a checkered history with the Muslim community. In 2012, the Irving Independent School District commissioned to determine if its curriculum was too pro-Islam. (It wasn鈥檛.) In a response to a local mosque setting up a mediation panel for its worshippers, earlier this year the Irving city council voted to support that would forbid Texas judges from applying Shariah law in their decisions (This was, of course, already the law.)
Islamophobia, and probably racism, certainly played a role in Ahmed鈥檚 ordeal, but the fact is overzealous administrators, zero-tolerance policies, and law enforcement officers ill-equipped to deal with schoolchildren have compromised educational environments throughout the country.
If we鈥檙e at the elbows or throwing them in jail overnight, then we鈥檙e failing them. If we鈥檙e hitting kids with for bringing fishing tackle to school, then we鈥檙e failing them. And if we鈥檙e using suspensions (which absolutely ) against students who build clocks, or , or , or chew their into the shape of a gun, then we鈥檙e failing them.
The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement is currently developing a specialized police-training program for officers who work in our schools. The sooner, the better. Officers need to understand that they鈥檙e dealing with children rather than criminals. They need to ensure that a child鈥檚 right to contact their parents is as sacrosanct as any other individual鈥檚 right to speak to an attorney. And above all, they need to undertake a comprehensive review of their racial-profiling practices and cultural-sensitivity training 鈥� oh yeah, and their use of handcuffs.
Ahmed suffered through a terrifying, traumatizing, and unjust ordeal. Yet because of the mass exposure of what he endured, he鈥檚 received to the White House, Facebook headquarters, and the Google science fair. I鈥檓 fairly certain that Ahmed is going to come out of this just fine. He鈥檚 called it the American dream come true and for him it seems to be so.
For too many others 鈥� the ones whose stories won鈥檛 go viral 鈥� the possibility of the American nightmare remains too real.
