When it comes to Muslim-Americans, that is …
The stupid, it burns!
Updated (9/20/15): And then there’s this, the revelation that Ahmed’s clock is not what he claims it to be, which has changed my thinking. Not about how stupid we look when we overreact to Muslims in our midst, but about the specific case of Ahmed Mohamed and what his intentions may have been in bringing the device to school. I’ll let you read it and draw your own conclusions.
Then read the comments below. Never let it be said I don’t consider other points of view. My friend Dick got me thinking, and that got me to digging, and now an entirely different story is emerging.
And to be perfectly honest, suspicion had been in the back of my mind ever since I watched the MSNBC interview of Ahmed Mohamed by Chris Hayes (warning: loud video with embedded advertising). Something about Ahmed’s demeanor triggered memories of Balloon Boy.
Re: “the clock”
A kid brings a home made clock to school and goes to jail. The English teacher was correct in reporting it to the principal. That’s when things started to go wrong. The area should have been evacuated, the student taken to the prinicipal’s office, and the sheriff and parents called. I talked to my former vice principle when I taught Jr Hi and that is what he would have done, but he is a pretty cool dude. Only after the object had been identified as a bomb should anything have happened.
Talk about a bunch of folks with their heads up and locked!
I don’t know about the teacher being right, but the rest of it, as you point out, was hardly the way to handle a suspected bomb. Since they didn’t evacuate the school or call in the bomb squad, it’s clear everyone involved, including the police, knew all along it wasn’t a bomb. This appears to be nothing more than putting an unpopular kid through the wringer, based entirely upon his outsider status and minority religion. Absolutely shameful. Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee must be grinning from ear to ear.
p.s. I didn’t say so, but those are screen shots of Twitter posts I put up a couple of nights ago. I looked for stock photos of Muslim-Americans on Google Images and wrote my own captions. Just in case anyone thinks I’m copying someone else’s work.
I’ m on the side of the teacher on this one. After teaching Jr Hi for four years, I learned that 7th and 8th graders can do incredibly stupid things. They do take special handling. In this case, the English teacher, who I assume is not a bomb expert, did the right thing. I would fault the teacher only if she, or he, did not report it. After that is when things went terribly wrong. Just the fact that the administration did not immediately contact the parents boarders on the incompetent, if not criminal negligence.
This was posted to Daily Kos on Thursday, Sep 17:
Dick, I realize I come across as a doctrinaire here. I’m willing to go along with the idea that a 13-year-old boy might have deliberately made a suspicious-looking clock to prove a point, and that there’s more to the story when it comes to his motivation. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to this view.
Well, the whole deal now seems to be a hoax. And Dick, I’m man enough to admit it. I still think we look stupid when we overreact to Muslim-Americans, or Muslims in general. But this kid was up to something, probably at the behest of his activist father, and it kind of looks like they were going after just the kind of reaction they got, with a lawsuit in mind. See the update I added to the post for an interesting link.
The fault is suspending the kid, the school was stupid. Vice principal / principal should have counseled the kid on common sense and sent him back to class. It would have ended there.
If the families plan was to focus attention on prejudice and the stupidity of zero tolerance excesses, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams with all the attention received.