It was reported this week that Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old Texas teen who was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school, ;is ;receiving ;a full-ride academic scholarship in Qatar. It’s certainly amazing news for Mohamed and his family, who received rousing on the Internet ;after the teen’s ;arrest in September. But there’s also been a subtle, off-putting trend in the reporting of this latest development. Numerous outlets, from New York magazine to Slate, have referred ;to Mohamed as “Clock Kid” in their headlines. ; But… can we not? Yes, it’s a pithy, headline-friendly moniker, an easy way to quickly get across that ;the kid who built that clock ;is the subject of this article. …
It was reported this week that Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old Texas teen who was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school, ;is ;receiving ;a full-ride academic scholarship in Qatar.
It’s certainly amazing news for Mohamed and his family, who received rousing on the Internet ;after the teen’s ;arrest in September. But there’s also been a subtle, off-putting trend in the reporting of this latest development. Numerous outlets, from New York magazine to Slate, have referred ;to Mohamed as “Clock Kid” in their headlines. ;
But… can we not?
Yes, it’s a pithy, headline-friendly moniker, an easy way to quickly get across that ;the kid who built that clock ;is the subject of this article. But ;Ahmed Mohamed has a name, and as innocuous as using “Clock Kid” might seem, it devalues the severity of what actually happened to him.
His story has, ultimately, been a positive one. From being unfairly profiled by his teacher to meeting the president of the United States and now, getting the academic opportunity of a lifetime, Mohamed’s story is a best-case scenario. But there are tons of kids (and adults, for that matter) who deal with this kind of religious and racial profiling who ;don’t ;get a press conference or a tweet from POTUS.
“Clock Kid,” for all its expedience, subtly colors Mohamed’s story as just a harmless misadventure. It wasn’t. ;The initial horror at what happened to Mohamed has devolved into a kind of feel-good human interest story where we seem to only vaguely acknowledge that the reason we even know who he is is because ;he was unfairly ;arrested as a suspected terrorist. Over a clock. ;
That’s what made the #IStandWithAhmed campaign so important — it named Mohamed, acknowledged his humanity, and reminded us that we were standing with him ;against ;Islamaphobia and racism. “Clock Kid” may be seemingly cute, but all it does is mask a problem that we still, unfortunately, insist on avoiding. ;
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