There will now be a new thumb rule for survival of brown people living in the USA: Don’t ever make a homemade clock if you are a brown-skinned person living in the USA, especially those of you who answer to the name of Mohammed or Ahmed. And if you do, don’t ever show it to anybody.
The story of Ahmed, the 14-year-old boy who was arrested for making a homemade clock because his teachers thought it was a bomb has stunned everybody on this side of the world because none of us, I’m sure, ever thought that USA’s paranoia would extend this far.
Ahmed, who studied in MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, is something of a science whiz and an inventor who constantly tinkers around with anything mechanical. So when he made a homemade clock, he took it rather proudly to school to show it to his teachers. His engineering teacher complimented him on it, but suggested that he shouldn’t show it to anybody else as it looked like a bomb.
But Ahmed, who obviously couldn’t comprehend why his school teacher would warn him like that, showed it to another teacher who reacted badly. Thinking that Ahmed was threatening her, the teacher called the police. A dumbfounded Ahmed found himself being led away by the police in handcuffs. The issue has raised outrage across the world and the boy himself has become the new face of the movement against Islamophobia.
The paranoia that set in post 9/11 has claimed many brown-skinned victims, some of whom were even Indians. Eight days ago, a 53-year-old Sikh man was brutally beaten up by a teenager, who spotted him at a traffic signal, pursued him and attacked him, calling him ‘Osama’ and ‘terrorist’. Possibly the most chilling of them all was when an Indian immigrant, Sunando Sen was pushed onto subway tracks in New York by a stranger and killed by an oncoming train. The stranger, a 31-year-old woman named Erika Mendez confessed to the murder and said, “I pushed a Muslim onto the tracks.”
Even cops have showed themselves to be influenced by Islamophobia because in February this year, they beat a 57-year-old Indian, Sureshbai Patel to the point of paralysis after he failed to answer their questions.
In the case of the 14-year-old, the police chief at Irving told the media at a news conference that they were justified in detaining Ahmed based on the information they had, regardless of the colour of his skin. “You can’t take things like that to school,” said police chief Larry Boyd to a dumbfounded audience.
Fortunately for Ahmed, he found support in the most unexpected quarter – the president, Barack Obama. “Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House?” he tweeted. Obama’s tweet brought forth a wave of support from other politicians and tech firms in the country.
Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.
— President Obama (@POTUS) September 16, 2015
But what nobody has talked about is the teacher’s reaction to Ahmed’s clock. Here is an evidently trained professional, expected to understand children and who has clearly been teaching Ahmed for sometime. And yet this teacher was unable to differentiate between a student seeking approval for a pet project (a clock for heaven’s sake!) and a terrorist’s bomb. It just goes to show that the faculty member’s inherent racism and Islamophobia overwhelmed any possible teacher training that he/she received.
Agreeing to it, Swati Popat Vats, president of Podar Education Network in Mumbai said, “That teacher should have thought before reacting, and tackled the situation in a much more sensible and sensitive manner. The school head could have verified facts when the teacher complained before jumping the gun. Instead the episode was blown out of proportion.”
“There is an urgent need to work on strengthening the skills of teachers and leaders in a community, because it impacts the others in the community,” she added. “Teachers need to be given soft skill training on handling sensitive issues. A sensitisation program is needed to weed out their paranoia, racism and phobia and set seal to it by testing them in real-life situations. And we need something like this not just for teachers in the USA, but everywhere.”
“A good example of a community leader handling a situation and turning the tide of events is how Obama reacted to the situation,” pointed out Swati. “Obama’s tweet, inviting Ahmed to the White House swung this tragedy around and influenced public opinion in favour of Ahmed. That was the role which Ahmed’s school principal should have played. Only that did not happen.”
Image Courtesy: Reuters
More on>> Kids
