By now, you’ve probably heard of Ahmed Mohamed. He’s the 9th grader who built a clock, and was promptly detained by police and questioned because school officials thought that his side science project was bomb. Said detention having nothing, nothing, to do with his name and ethnicity, I am sure.
You, assuming that you have two neurons firing in proper sequence, are outraged by this, and the cockle region of your heart is warmed that President Obama invited the precocious youngster to the White House.
But you’re not outraged enough. No. It is worse than you think.
See, the school officials (I hesitate to use the word teacher, since all they are teaching is fear mongering and idiocy) didn’t think the clock was a bomb. Neither did the police. They thought it kind of looked like a bomb and that there was no “broader explanation” for why Ahmed made it and brought it to school.
Ahmed’s father stated “That is not America,” and I have to both agree and disagree. In America, you don’t need a broader explanation to build things, you don’t need to explain innocent conduct to deficient power mad apparatchiks. You do things because you want to, because you learn from it, because it is cool.
Or at least, that is how America is supposed to be. Today is the era of “see something, say something.” So in today’s America, at least the America envisioned by some of those public servants we have elected to lead us, you better be able to pony up with proving your innocence citizen.