![]() I cheer for Ahmed for the accolades he has received, and will admit that the cacophony of social media has done real good in helping him to overcome his unjust humiliation. And it means doing so even when “Ahmed” isn’t a brilliant, agreeable, and adorable young man. Standing with Ahmed means actively and persistently fighting against islamophobia and racism in all its manifestations and at all of its roots. This incident likely would never have happened if not for the White House systematically doing exactly the opposite. Standing with Ahmed in more than just words means standing with him before, during, and after his public arrest and overwhelming vindication. It is also meaningless, because it is offered only in the face of scandal. The White House’s support for Ahmed is expedient. Just as its public embrace of Malala Yousafzai provided Obama an invaluable photo op with the young Pakistani champion of women’s education, while sidestepping her criticism of its drone program, the White House scores diversity points and portrays its figurehead as compassionate, socially engaged, and, worst of all, genuinely concerned with upholding justice. It is the president’s opportunism in commending Ahmed that is so grating, even insulting. And Ahmed Mohamed, a young inventor who expresses an earnest passion for discovery, who is confident yet measured in his speech, is so clearly deserving of praise, not punishment. Obama is human, a father to a 14-year-old, and often the subject of hateful discrimination himself. But I don’t deny the claim that Obama is sincere in his outreach, which was a reasonable response to a national embarrassment. It seems fair to expect that the president should be neither surprised nor outraged, responsible as he is for the state of affairs that put Ahmed in cuffs. Parsing through the politics of White House social media seems like a fruitless and unending task, but this particular tweet strikes an especially troubling chord regarding the president’s social media presence. The media hype has spiked and plateaued, but tweet hasn’t settled quite right. As Glenn Greenwald has argued, it's discrimination by design. Officially, a student's Muslim identity is enough to warrant perpetual suspicion and preemptive discipline. The affair has stirred up crucial discussion of the school-to-prison pipeline, what Henry Giroux describes as “the transformation of schools into punishing factories and… a war on youth.” The criminalization of Ahmed’s ingenuity is likewise indicative of the rampant islamophobia at every level of our society, brought by the jingoism of US imperialist warfare in the Middle East and the accompanying national security craze that automates the association between Islam and fanaticism, and encourages a “see something say something” paranoid vigilante culture.ĭespite the incident's seeming absurdity, there's a reason why school authorities didn't dismiss the teacher's overreaction as absurd, why cops saw it fit to lead a meek and intimidated young man away in cuffs, and why the Irving School District admits no wrongdoing in its handling of the situation. The effect was twofold: the endorsement made it even easier to jump on the #IStandWithAhmed clicktivism campaign, and the president won major PR points for his skillfully poised reaction. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. ![]() When news broke of a high school freshman in Irving, Texas-a Sudanese-American Muslim student named Ahmed Mohamed-arrested for presenting his teacher with his homemade clock, allegedly thought to be a “hoax bomb,” Barack Obama was quick to join the chorus of support for the young inventor. “The next step is to reject the tyranny’s discourse.” John Berger
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