Student Ahmed Mohamed Detained For Bringing Homemade Clock To School

An 11-year-old student was detained by authorities in Texas this week after his teacher mistook the homemade clock he brought to school for a bomb. 

Now, you might be wondering how on Earth a teacher thought that a simple circuit board attached to a clock display was a bomb. And that would be a reasonable thing to wonder –– until you learn that the student detained was Ahmed Mohamed, a Muslim whose father immigrated from Sudan. 

In case anyone is still drunk or deluded enough to believe that we live in a post-racial society, let me set the record straight. Racial profiling is alive and well, and it is what leads a Muslim kid named Ahmed Mohamed to be thrown into jail for making a homemade clock instead of being asked to show it off. It's what led his engineering teacher to tell him to keep it hidden from his other teachers, and it's what led to this child being hauled away in handcuffs by the police without ever committing a single crime.

Lest you still think it was all an innocent mistake, because you and the world "don't see color," a 13-year-old in the UK recently became the youngest person to build a working nuclear fusion reactor with the backing of his school. I'll give you one guess what race he is. That's right, white kids can build nuclear reactors without posing a safety risk, but a Muslim kid named Ahmed Mohamed can't build a fucking clock without being targeted for terrorism. 

Possibly the worst part of this story is that his school hasn't even apologized. Instead, administrators released a statement reiterating that teachers are encouraged to report safety concerns. By the time a clock is perceived as a safety risk when it's carried by a boy named Ahmed Mohamed, it's clear that the teachers at his school need a lesson on what constitutes a real safety risk.