I understand that libertarians are supposed to be on the right side of the political spectrum. And I understand that what defines the right side of the political spectrum is an abject hatred of everything on the left side of the spectrum. But sometimes when the left side of the spectrum makes a point it doesn’t have to be immediately shouted down.
Case in point, the police who terrorized of Ahmed Muhamed. Here we have a child with a very Middle Eastern name and a very Middle Eastern appearance who was accused of building a bomb, which is an activity very much associated with terrorism, which is very much associated with Middle Easterners in this country. The officer even said “Yup. That’s who I thought it was,” when Ahmed was brought to him, which suspiciously sounds like the officer was expecting a Middle Easterner when he received a report that a student had possibly built a bomb.
The political left, at least left as far as this country is concerned, quickly raised the issue of racism. So, naturally, the political right had to flip its shit and say that Ahmed’s situation couldn’t possibly be racism (or if racism was involved it was a minor point that really played no important part in the matter at all):
I bring up his race for one reason, and one reason only: Some are suggesting that Ahmed’s race is the only reason he was treated so badly. This is the obvious, inescapable conclusion, according to many left-leaning pundits: school officials identified a kid with an Islamic-sounding name, saw him carting around a device he had built, and cried terrorist!
I’m really fucking tied of the political right, especially self-proclaimed libertarian rags, jumping on any situation that appears to be fueled, at least in part, by racism and screaming “But it happened to a white person that one time so it’s obviously not racism!” Guess what? If it walks like racism, quacks like racism, and looks like racism it very well could be racism.
The political right, libertarians especially, need to get over this knee-jerk reaction of immediately disagreeing with anything the political left says. Sometimes you intellectual opposites make valid points.
In this case the author attempts to downplay racism so he can make a bigger issue of his pet peeve: zero tolerance policies. It doesn’t have to be either racism or zero tolerance policies; it can’t be both. In its zeal to shout down everything the political left says, the political right is missing some prime opportunities to make cases both sides should be able to acknowledge.
Zero tolerance policies and the war on unpatentable drug are two prime examples of seemingly fair, at least as far as race is concerned, laws can be used to target a particular group. If you read any school’s zero tolerance policies or any law related to the war on unpatentable drugs you will find no languages whatsoever that could be construed as racist. To many people that means these laws are fair and cannot be used for racist purposes. That’s an assumption that needs to be corrected.
There are two parts to every law: the law itself and the enforcement of the law. A broad law that appears to apply equally to everybody can be enforced selectively against targeted groups. Laws related to the war on unpatentable drugs are enforced more often against minorities than whites. The political right will argue that this simply means that minorities commit more drug offenses but a whole lot of evidence points to the contrary. Zero tolerance policies are no different. They can be written to apply equally to all students but may only be enforced against a targeted group.
A great deal of evidence supports claims that Ahmed was only treated the way he was because of his race. So immediately shouting, “It can’t be about racism because zero tolerance policies were used against this white kid,” makes you sound like a putz. Instead of immediately refusing to believe anything the political left says it would be much more productive for the political right, especially libertarians, to consider the evidence that supports the charges before responding. Who knows, both of you may be seeing the same problem from different angles and might stand a chance of addressing it if you worked together even if it was for a very brief period.
I am so glad my High School turned away from most Zero Tolerance policies because I legitimately did things that get kids expelled nowadays like making Blackpowder in Chemistry, or contact explosives, and a full list of other frowned upon activities.
Do they even teach chemistry anymore? I remember sitting in chemistry class thinking, “There are a lot of things in here that could be used to make explosives.” With how scared everybody is today I can’t imagine they would allow children to study such things anymore.
Most of my chemistry class (2000-2001) was in the “math” side of things and basic laboratory procedures. Really, it taught me almost nothing and the teacher’s outlook was more or less, “if you’re not going into chemistry or a related field, I really don’t care about you or if you learn anything.” Sadly, she was not alone in that school with such an outlook.
Reason and Cato are two that just make me shake my head. “First princiwhatnot? Never heard of those!” I enjoy when blogs, podcasts, and the LvM Institute tear them apart when they do crap like this. As much as I’ll argue that much or racism these days in the USA is either imagined or overblown, I’m not dumb enough to deny that it happens and happens to decent people. I also live not very far from Dallas and can attest to some of the racism I’ve heard down here… Though it’s not any worse than anywhere else I’ve lived; people just don’t really try to hide it down here.
This seems to happen with any national story. Before the dust settles and everything is known, everyone tries to point out how this fits their political point of view regardless of merits.
This story really didn’t sit well with me and once I saw a picture of Ahmed’s clock alarm bells went off. It definitely is not a normal hobby clock that you’d see a budding electronics enthusiast make and it didn’t take long for me to confirm my suspicions.
http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/2015/09/17/reverse-engineering-ahmed-mohameds-clock-and-ourselves/
It appears that someone just disassembled an old clock and then mounted it into a pencil case.
It also wasn’t very hard to find that Ahmed’s father was a political activist who has tried different kinds of political stunts to bait Islamaphobes.
He absolutely hit a home run. I really admire the genius of this stunt. It hit a perfect mix of ignorant teachers and administrators, zero tolerance policies and racism.
Everyone has responded almost exactly as you’d expect.
Of course the claim that he did all that as a purposeful stunt is quite a conjecture and doesn’t at all rule out the fact that racism almost certainly played a huge part in what happened. After all, the police knew it wasn’t a bomb almost immediately otherwise they would have called in the bomb squad and evacuated the school. So one can only conclude they were harassing him for their own entertainment.
Furthermore, it’s very possible that Ahmed literally found the parts lying around and decided to reassemble them for purely educational purposes.
But…what if?
What if this was just a political stunt?
What if the cops actually did harass the kid not because he was Muslim but because his father was a pain in the ass in the past?
What if there was an ulterior motive on the part of the kid’s father in having the child bring in what could have been an explosive device to the school?
There are a lot of questions here, and as you said in the article, some people automatically chop up news articles to fit their own personal biases.
Maybe the cop said what he said about who he thought it might be because the father has protested and caused disturbances in the past. Maybe the kid himself has taken part in protests or marches and become known to the police because of that.
It is easy to take sentences out of context and it is easy to take individual facts out of context and make them fit your own personal bias.
How do you tell if a certain person who happens to be a member of a minority is actually persecuted by the police or is someone who seeks out negative attention from authority figures for a political agenda?
It’s irrelevant because the police obviously knew it wasn’t a bomb as they never evacuated the school or called in the bomb squad. After that was determined the entire situation should have been dropped entirely. Instead the terrorized the poor kid.
It’s not acceptable to punish the child for the “sins” of the father under any circumstance.
Again, that’s irrelevant. As soon as the police determined the clock wasn’t a bomb they should have dropped the matter entirely.
As I noted in the article, it’s not a sure thing the teacher’s and police’s behavior was due to racism but the evidence very strongly points to that being the case. After all, we know the police did not legitimately believe the clock was a bomb because if they did their actions would have been different (namely they would have evacuated the school and called in a specialist to deal with the apparent bomb). What other reason would they have to harass the kid?
There is a lot of evidence for this being a case of racism and very little evidence for it being anything else.
http://iamsineater.tumblr.com/post/130162681859/ahmed-the-clock-hoaxer-and-his-tumblr-sjw-allies
One of the users on Tumblr came up with a pretty long series of links and reported facts that might indicate this was a staged hoax designed to make headlines.
Which is irrelevant. Regardless of the reason the situation came into being the way the police treated Ahmed was unacceptable.
At no point could it be said the police believed the clock was a bomb since they neither called in the bomb squad or evacuated the school. Therefore their acts of interrogation, public humiliation, and kidnapping were entirely unacceptable.
Professionals should act professionally whenever performing their jobs. The police in this case were entirely unprofessional and, had they not been wearing shiny liability shields, would be considered criminal. Whether Ahmed’s clock was a hoax (which is purely in the realm of speculation) or an experiment doesn’t matter.