One aspect of this whole never ending story is how quickly the event was framed as being motivated as islamophobia. It never would have happened had it been a nice white southern kid. There's even a girl, who is now a college student, that said something similar happened to her and it was because she was black. As the story goes she brought a volcano project to school. However, it wasn't you're garden variety baking soda/vinegar. This one went a little awry and it belched smoke. For that she got a 3-day suspension. In her opinion, the color of the skin was the determining factor. Giving Ahmed all the benefit of the doubt, I see it as they were both dumba$$es. So you got suspended, big deal. Cops came, so what did you expect?
My kids are pretty mixed. There's some black, Puerto Rican, European, Yemenise, Indian, me, and whatever. Percentage wise, they've got more right to call themselves Indian than Elizabeth Warren. Same with being black. During summer they get dark tans. They were raised without any religious education whatsoever. My mother-in-law was Catholic and bought into Santeria. My father-n-law is Muslim. He's made two hadjs.
When my oldest was still at home, he would go with me food shopping. From time to time, during the summer, as he unloaded the cart, the cashier would ask if he was with me. My wife used to say it was because the cashier was racist. Racist is a pretty strong word. Using it so cavalierly to my mind cheapens and diminishes the meaning of the word. To me the cashier was just confused. Here's this kid with a killer tan and much darker than me. I just saw it as an honest mistake. No biggie.
I never played the race card with my kids. You didn't get picked because of this. You got in trouble because you don't look Caucasian. Instead, work harder. Stop being a jerk. Pay attention. I don't know of one ethnicity or religion or where you're from that doesn't have its share of jerks. I don't expect it to be uniformly distributed. For this kid and his family to be playing up the whole Muslim thing is deplorable. This kid is growing up with the thought that if he's criticized, suspended, doesn't get this job or a better price on a car it's because he's Muslim. That's pathetic.
