The Xi Xiaoxing case follows the same broad pattern. But by his own assumptions, he put the entire school in danger! It turns out that being racist is not actually a serviceable replacement for competence, technical knowledge, or simple common sense. (The local mayor, by the way, is also an Islamophobic fruitcake.) In a letter defending himself, the school principal goes on and on about safety, security, necessary precautions, and so forth. It's a stark example of the fundamental uselessness of racial profiling as a strategy of fighting crime or terrorism. He insisted over and over that it was just a clock, but the police arrested him (as he was wearing a NASA T-shirt, no less) and then suspended him from school for three days. Despite the fact that it was manifestly a clock, one of Ahmed's teachers ratted him out, after which he was confronted by the school principal, Dan Cummings, and a policeman, who attempted to browbeat him into admitting he had tried to make a bomb.

As reported by The Dallas Morning News, Ahmed brought a homemade clock to school to show to a teacher, which he had put together with some wires and circuit boards.

It's what happens when cops and prosecutors are more concerned with racial stereotypes than they are with getting their facts straight. That followed on the heels of espionage charges being dropped against a Chinese-American scientist when the case against him collapsed ignominiously. Most recent was the case of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old engineering whiz who was arrested when school administrators and local police convinced themselves that his homemade clock was actually a bomb. This scientific illiteracy has been on bald display for the past week.

Ahmed nasa shirt