There are two things that predictably make me tear up whenever I see them depicted on screen or in print: cruelty to animals and cruelty to children. And yes, I know the tired adage about how you can spot a sociopath due to her empathy towards these two groups, and these two groups only, so let me just say: a lot of other things make me sad as well, but these are the biggies.
So I’ve been deeply upset, if not uncontrollably tearful, about what’s currently blowing up the Internet: the story of Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old high school freshman in Irving, Texas. An aspiring engineer, Mohamed brought a homemade clock to school to impress his teacher and wound up in handcuffs because some moron thought it was a bomb, because why wouldn’t the dark-skinned kid with the Muslim name be secretly planning all this time to use his scientific acumen to blow up his classmates and himself for Allah?
I keep picturing the scenario: the satisfaction on Ahmed’s face as he put the finishing touches on the clock; the excitement with which went to bed, aglow with anticipation over the praise he’ll receive from his teacher, who he imagines will be happily astonished at his achievement; the way he proudly, shyly, opened the box—described as a “hoax bomb” by police, housed in one of those storage boxes you can buy at Target for about ten bucks—only to find himself led away in handcuffs by uniformed men with guns. I keep running this sequence of events over and over again in my head like a movie, and every time it breaks my heart a little more.
And look, I know that Ahmed Mohamed is going to be just fine. The great sleeping beast of the Internet has roared on his behalf. The President tweeted at him and invited him to the White House; he’ll be touring MIT, Facebook, Google, and anywhere else he wants to go. In one fell swoop, his future in tech is basically secured, if he wants it to be. But he’ll never forget that this happened, and neither should we: because this, ladies and gentlemen, is what prejudice looks like.
Prejudice is a Muslim kid being arrested for bringing an engineering project to school. It’s a black kid shot to death for holding a toy gun. It’s a certain segment of the population is routinely harassed, beaten, jailed and killed for going about their business by ludicrously militarized and reactionary police forces.
These instances of inequality ought to put those mean pictures of Chuck Schumer, who is opposed to the Iran nuclear deal, or the paranoiac delusion that the President of the United States is purposefully using anti-Semitic propaganda against those who disagree with his foreign policy, into perspective.
It’s been a strange lead-up to Yom Kippur this year, full of internecine fighting and outrageous accusations, and as we take a step back, and re-evaluate ourselves, our community, and our words and actions on behalf of both, it might be nice—and necessary—to think about the things we face, but more importantly, the things we (mostly) don’t. White privilege is real, and as a people who, by and large, benefit from it currently—but haven’t always—we have a special duty to call things by their true names. We owe it to the Ahmed Mohameds of tomorrow, whoever they might be.
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Rachel Shukert is the author of the memoirs Have You No Shame? and Everything Is Going To Be Great,and the novel Starstruck. She is the creator of the Netflix show The Baby-Sitters Club, and a writer on such series as GLOW and Supergirl. Her Twitter feed is @rachelshukert.
