Middle Eastern Racial Discrimination

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In the news this week, we heard a heart-breaking story about how a teen’s hobby turned into his nightmare. The fourteen-year-old Ahmed Mohamed made a homemade clock. When he brought it school to show an engineering professor, the device went off during an English class. While Ahmed showed the teacher that it was just a clock, the teacher still felt threatened. This led to Ahmed’s arrest and suspension from school. The story went viral – with even President Obama commenting on it. People are wondering of this was an event of prejudice? Would a white student have gotten the same treatment as Ahmed? Many think this is a rumination of Middle Eastern prejudices felt by American people because of the wars in the Middle East and the “war on terrorism”. For the average citizens, a “terrorist” has incorrectly come to mean any person of Middle Eastern descent. Even if the word does not bring …show more content…

We have seen high schools, elementary schools, offices, and movie theaters all being susceptible to violence on mass scales. A beep heard in a classroom could be a harmless watch, or in some cases it could be a bomb. So that leaves the question, was this racial discrimination or fear gone too far? As we are not in the heads of the school official or the police, we cannot say exactly. The school, though, released a statement saying that the teacher was simply afraid of the device. They said that students just cannot bring that stuff the school. As if it is the student’s fault. They would like the public to believe that they were being extra careful in order to avoid a disaster. Looking at Ahmed’s history, though, there seems to be nothing troubling. His father told reporters that his son tinkers with everything; Ahmed loves to fix phones, cars, etc. If Ahmed explained that the device was a clock, and seeing as he had not done anything else troubling, why wouldn’t the teacher believe

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