Let's say that the kid's clock looked like a Hollywood bomb. The kid gets accosted by school personnel. So far so good. But instead of handcuffing him, belittling him, calling the cops, and suspending him, intelligent school personnel would have looked at the clock seen that it was no bomb, warned the kid to not pretend it was a bomb, and sent him off to class. End of story.
You don't think islamophonia and racism didn't have a major role to play in what actually happened? Please. Too many Americans have proven themselves easy to scare, and the bigots have stepped in and taken advantage of this. The result is a country in which irrationality and irrational behavior is excused by claiming fear. We see this in our foreign policy; we see it in the instance of a kid with his clock-that-to-some-think-looks-like-a-Hollywood-bomb-but-isn't. Cheers, Larry Sent from my iPhone > On Sep 18, 2015, at 7:24 AM, Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 12:26 AM, Alain Sepeda <alain.sep...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >> if someone with notion of electronics says that it looks like a bomb, I >> remove even his bachelor of science immediately. > > You and Jed have both missed the point. The skill that went into the thing > has nothing to do with what is of concern. The intention is what is of > concern. What does a young kid who brought such a thing to a school intend > to do? Perhaps the intention was harmless, or perhaps it was other than > harmless. Now the school administration has a situation to sort out. The > thing looked like a stage prop from Mission Impossible. It does not look > like an accurate prop, or a finished prop. But it definitely looks like the > makings of a Hollywood briefcase bomb. Anyone who argues against this only > discredits himself, greatly. The kid said it was just a clock. He may have > discredited himself in the process, perhaps escalating things. > > In an earlier time, this might have just been a harmless electronics project. > In this time, there are additional considerations to be taken into account. > None of this is to say that there was no racism in the incident. But ignore > Mohamed's race and religion for a moment, and the concerns remain. > > Eric >
