3 ms·

Probably not the whole story in this case. It seems improbable that little Johnny McFreckles III would have encountered as much trouble over his clock project.

by leoc 11y ago

jerf 11y ago
I realize it may seem like fun to try to bring "discrimination" into this, but plenty of white kids have gotten in plenty of trouble for stupid reasons too. Yes, including handcuffs and arrests, and at times, even court convinctions and orders for things like staying off computers entirely for some period of time. I see no reason to believe it would have gone any differently for any ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, or anything else. This stupid is well-distributed.
- owen_griffiths 11y ago
  This was my 'favourite' http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2015/03/06/6-year-old-fingers-shape-of-gun-suspended_n_6813864.html?ir=Australia http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2015/03/06/6-year-old-finge...
  - goldenkey 11y ago
    These administrators are so politically correct and political with how they get their jobs (usually favorites get promoted, etc.) My father was a teacher for 40 years and never stopped telling me stories about the people at the top. The school system is ran by circus animals.
- leoc 11y ago
  > but plenty of white kids have gotten in plenty of trouble for stupid reasons too. Of course they have. However, the authorities everywhere don't consistently flip their wigs—certainly not as badly as this—every time a student does something like bringing in this project. So the fact that they wigged out badly in this particular case probably—not certainly, but really pretty likely—does have some relation to the fact that the student just happened to be Ahmed Mohamed. (OTOH there pretty certainly is a selection bias in the fact that this particular case is getting so much publicity. It's the social-media catnip of the perceived (and again, let's be serious here, probably partly real) discrimination that has pushed this one up the charts while others go mostly unremarked.)
  - jerf 11y ago
    You can not assert a consistent behavior off of one example. You're finding something you seem to be looking for. I was not kidding about being arrested and getting ordered to not touch computers for some period of time. Wigs have been flipped. I do not know that school administrators have "consistently" flipped out at white kids, either. I don't know what the baseline occurrence of these events are. My suspicion would be that every case we've ever heard of, including this one, is still an outlier, and thus not suitable for drawing sweeping conclusions from, and in fact kids probably do stupid stuff like this every day without making the national news.
    - leoc 11y ago
      Hm? I didn't assert any consistent pattern of behaviour, I only denied one.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
CWuestefeld 11y ago
I see a couple of paths to combating the way authority oversteps its bounds, sometimes fatally as we see in much recent news. One avenue is to focus on those victims that happen to be a racial minority, and force the authorities to treat members of that minority group with kid gloves. This literally forces all of us to keep race and other divisive demographics at the forefront of our consciousness whenever we deal with other people. That's not a good strategy to reach of goal of everyone being blind to race. Another avenue is to focus on the powers that are being wielded unjustly. By taking away to power to cause such damage, or at least imposing accountability when it's misused, we can force those with power to rein in their abusive behavior to all. This latter seems the winning strategy to me.
xenophonf 11y ago
Funny you should use "McFreckles" as a stereotypical white name. Irish immigrants have historically faced a lot of discrimination in the U.S. on the grounds of both ethnicity (compared to English immigrants and their descendants) and religion (Catholics instead of the majority Protestants).

Probably not the whole story in this case. It seems improbable that little Johnny McFreckles III would have encountered as much trouble over his clock project.

by leoc 11y ago

Probably not the whole story in this case. It seems improbable that little Johnny McFreckles III would have encountered as much trouble over his clock project.

jerf 11y ago

I realize it may seem like fun to try to bring "discrimination" into this, but plenty of white kids have gotten in plenty of trouble for stupid reasons too. Yes, including handcuffs and arrests, and at times, even court convinctions and orders for things like staying off computers entirely for some period of time. I see no reason to believe it would have gone any differently for any ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, or anything else. This stupid is well-distributed.

owen_griffiths 11y ago
This was my 'favourite' http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2015/03/06/6-year-old-fingers-shape-of-gun-suspended_n_6813864.html?ir=Australia http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2015/03/06/6-year-old-finge...
- goldenkey 11y ago
  These administrators are so politically correct and political with how they get their jobs (usually favorites get promoted, etc.) My father was a teacher for 40 years and never stopped telling me stories about the people at the top. The school system is ran by circus animals.
leoc 11y ago
> but plenty of white kids have gotten in plenty of trouble for stupid reasons too. Of course they have. However, the authorities everywhere don't consistently flip their wigs—certainly not as badly as this—every time a student does something like bringing in this project. So the fact that they wigged out badly in this particular case probably—not certainly, but really pretty likely—does have some relation to the fact that the student just happened to be Ahmed Mohamed. (OTOH there pretty certainly is a selection bias in the fact that this particular case is getting so much publicity. It's the social-media catnip of the perceived (and again, let's be serious here, probably partly real) discrimination that has pushed this one up the charts while others go mostly unremarked.)
- jerf 11y ago
  You can not assert a consistent behavior off of one example. You're finding something you seem to be looking for. I was not kidding about being arrested and getting ordered to not touch computers for some period of time. Wigs have been flipped. I do not know that school administrators have "consistently" flipped out at white kids, either. I don't know what the baseline occurrence of these events are. My suspicion would be that every case we've ever heard of, including this one, is still an outlier, and thus not suitable for drawing sweeping conclusions from, and in fact kids probably do stupid stuff like this every day without making the national news.
  - leoc 11y ago
    Hm? I didn't assert any consistent pattern of behaviour, I only denied one.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

CWuestefeld 11y ago

I see a couple of paths to combating the way authority oversteps its bounds, sometimes fatally as we see in much recent news. One avenue is to focus on those victims that happen to be a racial minority, and force the authorities to treat members of that minority group with kid gloves. This literally forces all of us to keep race and other divisive demographics at the forefront of our consciousness whenever we deal with other people. That's not a good strategy to reach of goal of everyone being blind to race. Another avenue is to focus on the powers that are being wielded unjustly. By taking away to power to cause such damage, or at least imposing accountability when it's misused, we can force those with power to rein in their abusive behavior to all. This latter seems the winning strategy to me.

xenophonf 11y ago

Funny you should use "McFreckles" as a stereotypical white name. Irish immigrants have historically faced a lot of discrimination in the U.S. on the grounds of both ethnicity (compared to English immigrants and their descendants) and religion (Catholics instead of the majority Protestants).