I’m Ahmed. Except I’m Not Brown
ihnatko.com
ihnatko.com
My criminal case? I ran the ping -t from a windows cmd prompt to see if an IRC server (I administrated) had rebooted. Screenshot evidence of my hardship on their servers and the 'attack' on my own server could not be argued.
My earlier suspension (1064 pop town in MS) was for bringing a flute made from cane to school. It was a project item for art where we had to make a musical instrument. The cane was considered a physical assault device. I was suspended, had to walk home, and faced 3 months of Saturday school. My art teacher was the one who claimed it was a weapon.
My wife was driven home by the school principal (alone at 14) in the first town because she 'appeared drugged', and no parents were there and she was left on the porch. She was given a Benadryl for allergies. She was suspended afterwards.
The flute situation on the other hand seems like an almost personal attack, but that's just petty nonsense that quickly fades with time.
My wife's scenario (and various others) still has an impact to this day.
The authors trying to shoehorn this story into identity politics is unfortunately predicable click bait at this point. It just detracts form the actual issue which is overboard paranoid legislation which makes these incidents more likely.
Sounds like schools should appropriate part of their budget for threat consultation.
Would it have been better if the school staff were all familiar with electronics projects? Sure.. but that's not the reality we live in
This is unfounded neuroticism.
What?! That's just fundamentally mislead as to the nature of life. Everything has the possibility to cause harm. Absolute harm reduction is horribly mislead and will be used to end anything like freedom. This is not the answer!
This was made very clear to me when I went to high school (from 2004-2009). If you had a gun, or a toy gun, or two pieces of wood nailed at a right angle and held like a gun, and you so much as brought it onto the school grounds, you would be handed over to the police and recommended for expulsion.
I'm 100% sure that next week, at least one high school kid will be expelled for something like this. It won't make the news, because there won't be a fleet of outraged tumblr users to champion the kid, because he won't have a name like Ahmed Mohammed. Probably he'll be black, because hey, school to prison pipeline has to pump, but he could just as easily be white.
It's not like the school administrators have any leeway in enforcing district policy. The principal would get fired if he just went "Well, you brought something that we have to expel you for, but you're a good kid, don't do it again." That's how you get favoritism and corruption and it's not something we should try to encourage.
Instead, we should attack the actual problem here, which is the zero tolerance policy. You can't get Donald Trump soundbytes about zero tolerance policies, but that's the actual problem.
"Zero tolerance of differing perspectives" sums up contemporary USian thought.
(ding ding ding! we have some winners!)
For the threat they're making it out to be, they sure didn't act as if they believed it themselves.
last month we were coming back to brazil from denver, when her backpack was flagged for "inspection". when i asked the TSA officer why, she was quite polite and said "the x-ray inspector said there's a water bottle on her backpack". we were 100% sure that there was nothing like that because we triple checked before getting into the line.
when the 'inspector' looked at her bag and the x-ray image on the monitor, it was not the same bag. the x-ray guy marked the wrong bag for inspection and the bag with the water bottle was already gone. the inspector apologized and let us go.
my wife's question after we were gone was: "if they think water bottles could be bombs, shouldn't they close the airport?"
now she knows why TSA is a farce.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-undercover-dhs-tests-find...
Moreover, why even target a plane? A bomb in a security checkpoint is just as, if not more, scary and deadly.
Just increasing the odds of being checked is a deterrent.
> A bomb in a security checkpoint is just as, if not more, scary and deadly.
Is it really? I'm not that good in physic but a plane that explode, or that's hijacked does at least 100 deaths, and has the potential to do even more. Could you do that at a security checkpoint?
B doesn't exist though. The TSA has an abysmal record of passing tests. They mostly don't check bags, and if they did check one with a bomb, the attacker could make it go kaboom. You don't think that would make the public fearful? "Bomb at Security Checkpoint" as a headline would be terrifying to most people.
> Is it really? I'm not that good in physic but a plane that explode, or that's hijacked does at least 100 deaths, and has the potential to do even more. Could you do that at a security checkpoint?
Have you ever been to a security checkpoint? At a larger airport there is easily hundreds of people in line, usually in a confined space.
Probably but my point is all about fear of getting caught before succeeding. Does the truth matter as much as the fear?
> You don't think that would make the public fearful? "Bomb at Security Checkpoint" as a headline would be terrifying to most people.
Well finding a bomb doesn't mean it will actually explode and as long as the number of death is way smaller, they would have way better target than that (one that doesn't have a ton of security guards and multiple layer to stop you).
> Have you ever been to a security checkpoint? At a larger airport there is easily hundreds of people in line, usually in a confined space.
I haven't no but by what I see they aren't in confined space, the walls are far away, and they are one in front of the other, acting like human shield.
My point is that the fall back is not "go to jail", the fall back would be "blow up the security line."
Also, are random chemical checks (which are looking for something very rare by sampling a very small population, hmmmm) any more helpful than the screenings that are also taking place, notably X-ray imaging?
> Does the truth matter as much as the fear?
No, it matters much less it seems :(
> Well finding a bomb doesn't mean it will actually explode
In context, the hypothetical headline meant a bomb had gone off.
> as the number of death is way smaller, they would have way better target than that (one that doesn't have a ton of security guards and multiple layer to stop you).
Smaller than what? 50 people vs 100? 100 vs 200? it's still a terrible thing and will have a very similar affect on the public.
> I haven't no but by what I see they aren't in confined space, the walls are far away,
Most of the ones I've been in are basically tunnels are bridges 100' or so across. Sometimes the lines themselves pour out into the rest of the terminal, which is less confined.
> and they are one in front of the other, acting like human shield.
I honestly couldn't tell you how people squashed together would work, from a physics perspective, but I don't think it's pretty or clean regardless.
This all detracts from the main topic: their scanning procedures are antithetical (and statistically suspect) to the handling (and rarity) of what they're looking for.
> My point is that the fall back is not "go to jail", the fall back would be "blow up the security line."
Yeah I understood that point, that's exactly why I said succeeding. You can get caught, thus you are stopped and can't do your plan, probably for ever.
> Also, are random chemical checks (which are looking for something very rare by sampling a very small population, hmmmm) any more helpful than the screenings that are also taking place, notably X-ray imaging?
I don't know, my whole point is that the fear of getting caught and not actually killing the number of people you want to kill, or hijacking the plane you were supposed to can be a deterrent. The more you increase that fear (by increasing checkpoint), the more it's a deterrent.
> No, it matters much less it seems :(
As long as they believe they can get caught, isn't it enough?
> In context, the hypothetical headline meant a bomb had gone off.
10 deaths, 50 victims in the hospital is clearly less fearful than, "Plane hijacked because of a bomb on board, 200 deaths, still counting...".
> Smaller than what? 50 people vs 100? 100 vs 200? it's still a terrible thing and will have a very similar affect on the public.
I'm curious, in your hypothetical situation what would be the alternative? That bomb wouldn't be on board of the plane? Sure it's a terrible thing... but the alternative is worst...
> Most of the ones I've been in are basically tunnels are bridges 100' or so across. Sometimes the lines themselves pour out into the rest of the terminal, which is less confined.
Yeah in theses cases that's not a good idea, any crowded place in a confined space are bad idea too...
> This all detracts from the main topic: their scanning procedures are antithetical (and statistically suspect) to the handling (and rarity) of what they're looking for.
Yeah I'm not saying they are not, again that wasn't my point at all.
Really? You begin to say they are statically insignificant and then follow by saying they wouldn't care with failed operations. That doesn't seems like an intelligent solution when you doesn't have much opportunities. I'm pretty sure by giving your life you would hope to kill more than a few dozen people... which you can do pretty much anywhere.
Sadly, any potential solutions will always seems like they aren't effective because of the likelihood of an attack.
> Why do we assume only planes will be attacked?
Who assume that? I don't...
All we can do is minimize the ratio effort:death, that include not having a huge crowd in a confined space. I remember a documentary about train technology to limit death in trains, I don't remember the conclusion, but the goal wasn't to stop explosion, just to limit death. Sure any death is bad but no solution will be perfect.
Absolutely. Some of the security lines at an airport like O'Hare are crowded enough that you could easily take out 100 people (or more) with a bomb sitting 2 feet from the TSA agent's podium. All of this TSA stuff, even if it were effective, would only be effective at moving the problem, not at eliminating it. Any smart terrorist in 2015 would look at this situation and say "let me detonate my bomb in the security line" instead of even bothering trying to get it on a plane. An even smarter terrorist might blow the bomb up in a movie theater or at a football game.
So yeah, this TSA stuff is a total farce.
At first I wanted to say, "If he were white today the same thing would have happened," but the more I imagine a nerdy white kid with circuit board in a case, the more I think that race played a big role.
I live in a very, very conservative area, where minorities are given a lot of crap.
Cover-your-ass security theater entirely incentivizes responding to every possible issue with the most drastic possible response. There is no incentive to worry about the side-effects of putting a 14 year old on the "no fly list". Instead, they're all trying as hard as possible to make sure that they're not the person that okayed somebody bringing a bomb to the science fair.
Of course everything they've done after the science teacher cleared things up has been incredibly wrong...
If I had brought to school what Ahmed did, I probably would have been dropped with two to the chest and one in the head by the school cop and then double-tapped on the ground. Maybe I just would have been tased, handcuffed, arrested, and recommended for expulsion as per the school district's zero tolerance policy, but since I had long hair and wore lots of black clothing at the time my school probably regarded me as the most likely Columbine copycat candidate and would have reacted appropriately.
Ironically, this was in an affluent area with plenty of wealthy foreigners living in the US. There were a few Muslim students at my school, and aside from juvenile idiots I'm sure there was almost no islamophobia, and certainly none on the institutional level. But everyone has stereotypes they fear, and if you fall into that as a child in the school system god help you.
When I was in school, I was almost arrested at my school for having phreaker box diagrams in my backpack, which was searched illegally (do kids in public school actually have privacy rights anyway?) by police after an unrelated complaint. I was unfairly targeted this way many times in different schools. I am as white as they come. This is not a brown vs non-brown issue; all schools treat their intelligent, inquisitive students like criminals. I say this having attended five different middle + high schools, public, magnet and private.
She instantly went to the director, who then started to discuss it with me (after 45 minutes of him shouting at me in a hallway, which had become a public attraction, he gave up), but at no point did anyone try to access my bag.
The fact that my parents studied law might have something to do with it, though, so I’m not sure if other people would have been treated the same.
> I’m angry, and I’m a little upset with myself because I want to be useful.
I'm thinking the same thing. What I'm wishing is that I held a position of influence at a private high school, so I could offer him immediate entrance and a full scholarship. Mostly to correct the injustice, but also because he's clearly a top student: unassisted home-made clock trumps perfect SSATs.
So if anybody reading this has such a position -- even a little bit -- please try to make it happen.
He's made other things as well that are impressive. He makes his own radios and fixes his go-kart. Lots of potential there.
As for me, if flushing the toilet doesn't help, I need to call someone.
School body is 86% non-white:
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/texas/dist...
And in the entire disctrict, whites are 12%, and "browns" are 70%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Independent_School_Dist...
PS: read for understanding instead of just trying to stoke your fauxrage.
Reducing racism gets us more "benefit of the doubt" that might have resolved the situation informally. But it does nothing to change school administrators thinking that turning a 14 year old over to the police on a whim is an appropriate thing to do.
In this specific case I'm just glad this kid is actually innocent so that he can hopefully disassociate the event from himself and see that the school and police are horribly broken. Imagine if the arrest had been "justified" for accidentally bringing a pocket knife or aspirin to school - what kind of lasting psychological damage does that cause?
It is quite likely that the school district administration and teachers are mostly white. Multiple reasons for this,
1. Brown people are recent (~last 25 years) immigrants in most cities. Remember, up until 1960s you had citizenship quotas and racist immigration policies.
2. By being recent immigrants, they are less likely to be part of the police force, political establishment, city administration, and so on. It takes a minimum of 10-15 years before someone who has entered the US becomes a citizen. School districts, etc. seldom employ H1Bs or other immigrants.
3. Most brown immigrants come to the US as refugees, illegal immigrants, or skilled labor. That creates a bit of a bimodal distribution in everything from income to educational outcomes of their children. Teachers, school administration, etc. do not, in general fit into the ends of this bimodal distribution. There are obviously many, many, exceptions, but I'd hypothesize that brown people are severely underrepresented among school district administrators, school teachers, policemen, etc.
What I'm claiming is it's unlikely to be blatant white on brown racism when 9 out of 10 students are non-white and 50% of the school admin panel is non-white.
The media is making this out to be some type of a racial profiling case... Where a lone brown student in a class of all whites is singled-out due to his skin color and name.
But basically if this kid was white, and was named Chris(the christian equivalent of Mohamed).. He would not have been subjugated to any of this. That is privilege that is racism.
There are a large number of examples where this is simply false.
You have no evidence that this wouldn't happen to a white kid, but that's the most likely outcome. If this were pre-9/11 (pre-Patriot Act BS), I'm not so sure. Racism and prejudice to some extent is just part of the human condition. Perhaps one day we'll advance enough to make it a non-issue, but we need to stop the hysterics about "only in America" and "whites always get favored" without some concrete evidence and historical context.
2. There is tons of evidence that whites get favored in pretty much everything from home loans borrowing rates, being accepted to rent a house, pay, and the number of times they get pulled over by a cop.
http://www.jconline.com/story/news/2015/05/06/among-favored-... http://mije.org/mmcsi/criminal-justice/white-crime-victims-f... http://ndsn.org/march93/favored.html
As for your evidence, I think you're going out on a limb with "whites get favored in pretty much everything". While that may have been true up until the 1960s, we've progressed to Barack Obama and Oprah. Still a very long way to go with regards to the specific things you mentioned (some of which may be more socioeconomic factors rather than skin color), but your claim just doesn't hold water.
In the context of this show: * "some" are always white and/or female "others" are some white males, and all non-white males.
This "benefit of the doubt" is a privilege.
I've never watched the show, but when one group of people is disproportionately represented in crime statistics, in some cases by a factor of 30x, then it's just common sense rather than benefit-of-the-doubt.
Sometimes it's wanting to find the racial injustice that increases the sensitivity to other injustices.
While the student's race might have played a role in the punishment, I'm at least as suspicious that it has played a role in increasing media coverage of it. Of course both assessments are non-falsifiable when limited to this one specific case.
No big brand really focuses on the increasingly authortarian nature of American society, especially not in the treatment of minors. Although they'll pay lip service to it every now and again when it's useful fodder for other topics.
How does their non-whiteness protect them from seeing Brown men and boys, or just Muslims in general, as potential threats?
D cell batteries and LED lights? Must be a bomb. - Boston police 2007
"I hope Ahmed finds the community he seeks at MIT — & I hope MIT's administration can support future engineers in need of legal protection."
Too polarized and emotional. There is a problem, yes. But that doesn't mean that all teachers will treat a black or brown child differently from the white one. And also America is not the worst case. Here in Ukraine almost everyone hates black and brown people.
They had never met a black person in real life.
Your culture is different than theirs.
Wolfram-Alpha agrees: they will likely never have met a black person. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=black+people+in+ukraine
On the other side of the coin, while visiting Dallas on work from Europe, I was asked, quite seriously, whether I was worried about the the Muslim campaign to control Europe by outbreeding the natives (or something, I'm not good at remembering this stuff). I don't think they'd ever met a Muslim in their life.
And yeah. What a world we live in. Hopefully someday these people will find out how perfectly usual everyone is, even people from different cultures.
So their only impression of what African Americans are really like is presumably formed via American media?
Hmmm....
I knew some Ukrainian girls over the years and they seemed to me like good people with no racial prejudices towards people of other ethnicities and they blended very well with non Caucasian people.
Maybe you're hanging out with neo Nazis and ultra nationalist nutjobs and then extrapolating this to all Ukrainians?
The post 911 Patriot Act paranoia of the American authorities is ridiculous, but pleas do not get sucked in by click bait demagogues. There is no bottom the stupidity when it comes to these stories. There has been several cringe worthy stories of this type in the past few years about people with "homemade gadgets".
The answer to stupid overreaction isn't to say that benign educational activities are stupid; It is to stop overreaction.
Imagine if it was a bomb how the media would be damning the school for not acting.
Some schools have actually done that.
100 years ago you could read how to create explosives in an encyclopedia. A lot of people knew from hobbies and profession. Don't blame the Internet.
I find it funny that as an outsider that Americans don't let their kids walk/play alone in their neighborhood because "they are so naive and innocent", and there are child/sexual predators out there. Yet they somehow believe the same kid named Ahmed (guilt by association?) can somehow conjure up a bomb.
Lede buried.