(CNN)When Ahmed Mohamed went to his high school in
Irving, Texas, Monday, he was so excited. A teenager with dreams of becoming an
engineer, he wanted to show his teacher the digital clock he'd made from a
pencil case.
The 14-year-old's day ended not with praise, but
punishment, after the school called police and he was arrested.
This
'Clock Boy' has been a hot topic in the news lately, and included in this
article was the 'social media reaction':
Outrage over the incident -- with many
saying the student was profiled because he's Muslim -- spread on social media
as #IStandWithAhmed started trending worldwide on Twitter
with more than 100,000 tweets Tuesday morning. The school's Facebook page
is roiling with sharp criticism of the way the teen was treated, and the
hashtag #engineersforahmed is gaining popularity.
Now, this will not
be another article discussing how wrong the teacher and the police was in how
they treated him and how Ahmed deserves an apology, or about defending either
side in what happened on that day, there are plenty articles on the web adding to
the 'outrage' and the reactions that have been stirred in people regarding what
happened to this boy.
I mean, sure it was
racial profiling and yes it was unfair and things like this shouldn't happen,
however reciting this over and over again and getting angry and upset about it
is not going to create a solution and will not show us the way to make sure that
situations like this don't happen again and that 14 year old innocent kids
don't become victimized by the fears that have been brainwashed into the adults
of the world, like a fear of terrorists infiltrating our lives and planting
bombs and creating chaos everywhere. Fears that are, if you really look at it,
quite absurd and really far out there, but unfortunately very common in people
these days, considering how susceptible the human mind is to information
impulses and considering how steadily the media has been impulsing this
apparent omnipresent terrorist threat the last few years.
If anything, events
like this one where someone is discriminated against, shunned or even arrested
due to preprogrammed perceptions, assumptions and beliefs concerning race,
religion and so forth were bound to happen sooner or later, and are in fact
happening every moment, without any media coverage.
What this one event
and the 'outrage' it is stirring up in people all across social media is really
showing us is, ironically, just how little we really care about all the events
just like this one and even worse which are happening all of the time. It is
revealing how oblivious we seem to be to the reality of the world that we are
currently living in, which is a world wherein 'clock boy' is not an isolated
event, not by a long shot. In fact for many it is business as usual, just
another day on planet earth, where people love to get outraged yet never quite
enough to really bring about any change.
So let us then look
at the real issue at hand, the one which we should be concerned about. The
issue which is hiding underneath the Clock Boy situation and is making sure
that those things will continue happening, that things will never change for
the better and will most likely only get worse, no matter how many people get
outraged about it.
Let's look at what
it is that really needs changing, and it isn't the police who needs to
apologise or the teacher who needs to get fired or have some kind of
anti-racism therapy. Those particular policemen and that particular teacher
were just in the wrong place at the wrong time you could say, because if anyone
of us was in their shoes, we would have reacted in exactly the same way. And
why is that? Because we have all been influenced in exactly the same way by
exactly the same media with exactly the same prejudices, judgments and beliefs
regarding race, religion and specifically unfortunately Muslims.
What we should be
learning from this event, and how we should be approaching it, is within this
realization and understanding that those policemen and that teacher are each
and every one of us. Those people represent parts and aspects of ourselves
which we, and specifically those of us who are reacting with the most
'outrage', are clearly in complete denial of.
I mean, of course we
don't like seeing ourselves as a racist or as someone who discriminates against
others based on superficial judgments of appearance, why of course not because
we wouldn't be very liked by other people. We'd be seen and judged as 'bad' by
the rest of society and we might even spark social outrage.
I'm sure this was
the case for the teacher and those policemen. I'm sure they were 'good people',
they 'meant well' and they don't generally think of themselves as a racist or
someone who would discriminate against others. But in this particular situation,
it just kind of 'happened'. The actual racism and prejudices which existed on
some level inside of them - whether or not they were aware of it - just came
out in how they handled the situation. It came out and it was there for the
whole world to see.
And I am sure that
afterwards, when people got outraged and social media started burning them to
the stake, they wished that they could do it all over again and they would not
have reacted in the same way. But the thing is, if they were really given a second
chance and they could do it all over again, they would act the exact same way.
Because, the problem
was never that their intentions weren't pure, or that they meant to do
something hurtful to this kid. The problem was that they were not AWARE of
where their own behaviour was coming from. They were not aware that there
existed racial and other discriminatory prejudices, assumptions and judgments
in their own mind.
And that is the
unfortunate consequences of wanting to be a good person, or more specifically
wanting to be seen as a good person in society. We tend to hide everything that
exists inside our own mind which may be judged badly, so that we can appear to
be 'politically correct' to our environment.
This is something
that we are all doing, we all wear masks and we all, or at least most of us,
make an effort to 'watch our words' and to place a guard in front of our mouth
to make sure that we don't say anything which may be perceived by others in a
bad way. It is such moments however, like in the clock boy situation, where it
is our very behavior which is showing to the world what really exists in our
mind. That would be our subconscious and unconscious mind coming through in our behavior, which is something we cannot simply stop in that moment because we
are just not aware of any of it.
The clock boy event
was an extreme and very obvious and clear example of how our subconscious and
unconscious mind directs our behavior, but in fact our sub- and unconscious
mind is directing our behavior in every given moment. It is our sub-and unconscious
mind which is creating the world which we are living in. So even though we may
consciously think and believe that we are a good person, and as long as our
immediate environment agrees it is easy to believe that about ourselves, but at
the same time it is our very behavior in every moment that is impacting the
world we live in on every level and that is contributing to all the things in
this world which we may consciously claim to be 'against' or outraged by.
It is time that we
start getting to know who we are as beings on a much deeper level so that we
can begin to see directly how it is that we are contributing to and creating
the world we live in and so we can start creating change in that world on a
real level.
There are ways to
start developing this self-awareness and start nurturing the seed of change
within yourself - investigate DIP Lite.