Column: Ahmed’s clock proves it’s time to disarm our irrational fear

The heartbreaking story of a Texas 9th-grader arrested because he had the gall to make a clock and bring it to school to show his engineering teacher has left Americans understandably reeling. Twitter is beside itself. Even President Obama has posted a supportive message for the boy, Ahmed Mohamed, inviting him to bring his “cool clock” to the White House.

Ahmed’s arrest is a severe reminder to all of us that Islamophobia is alive and well in America. Despite so many efforts to counteract such prejudice, the false equations remain: Brown = suspicious. Muslim = terrorist. For the rest of us, who know that Muslims are no more like terrorists than Christians are like the KKK or the Christian Identity Movement, this stuff is mind-numbingly frustrating. When will they ever learn? we ask ourselves, like, constantly. When will they ever learn?

But it must be said that Ahmed’s situation is about more than Islamophobia. It’s also, I believe, about our fear-mongering, better-to-be-safe-than-sorry culture. And not just in Texas — but everywhere. Too many of us are rapidly becoming victims of our own irrational fear.

Just look how often parents go overboard in their desire to protect their kids. It happens ALL THE TIME. They justify their actions with every story they see about a child abduction or a child being run over by a car or a child being seduced into drug use or a child caught in gang crossfire or a child harmed in some other way because his parents weren’t there watching over him, saving the kid from almost certain disaster.

I am not above this.

As a mother of an only child, I have compulsions of overprotection all the time. I justify these compulsions with my emotions and gut reactions (“I just feel better knowing she’s not crossing a big street by herself.”) I justify them with finger-pointing. (“If I let my kid play in front of the grocery store while I go inside to shop, others might think I’m a bad parent.”) I justify them with all the [bleeping] stories that pop up in my news feed all day long. (“Maybe I can’t prevent random bad things from happening, but I at least I can help prevent random bad things from happening to MY KID.”)

We know — well, some of us know — that these news stories are woefully misleading. Incidents of children being, for instance, abducted are exceedingly rare. According to the Polly Klaas Foundation, “99.8 percent of all children who go missing do come home.” In fact, crime overall is much lower than it was when we were kids, points out my idol, Lenore Skenazy, of Free-Range Kids.

We also know that helicopter parenting is bad for kids; it compromises their ability to make independent decisions, lowers their self-esteem and creates incompetence and co-dependence. Even worse, though, fear begets fear. When we treat the world like a dangerous place, our kids come to believe the world is dangerous.

But it is dangerous! says the helicopter parent still tooling around in my head. Bad things happen all the time. Why should I take any chances? I’d rather be safe than sorry.

Of course, this attitude spills over into schools. How can it not? In being sensitive to parents’ “concerns” and, frankly, fearing for their own jobs (Oh, hello again, fear!), too many teachers and administrators go along with, and even perpetuate, this fear culture.

And it’s gone too far. Now, when we see a child doing anything out of the ordinary — playing alone on a playground, riding in a subway by himself, bringing a homemade clock to school … our hackles go up. Why is that happening? What could it mean? Should I be alarmed? And the answer almost always is: Yes! Yes, I MUST be alarmed. I am a parent; I am a teacher; I am a principal. The lives of children are on the line. There is no harm in going overboard, but there could be harm in holding back.

But you know what? That’s not true, and Ahmed’s clock is proving it. There most certainly is harm in going overboard. And it’s not always better to be safe than sorry. Here is an innocent boy being harmed not in spite of the protective measures implemented by the school, but because of it. And think of the thousands of other boys across American who look like Ahmed; don’t think they’re not harmed by this, as well.

I absolutely agree that this was an act of racial and religious discrimination. Ahmed would not have been singled out had he not been brown and Muslim. But the reactionary model set to work in this case signals a much wider problem. I would hazard to guess that a great number of my wonderful liberal compatriots taking to Twitter with hashtags such as #IStandWithAhmed would also not want THEIR children’s school “taking any chances” on an unusual beeping device that looked vaguely scary.

I’m not AT ALL excusing what this school did. It was radical and gross and I, too, Stand With Ahmed. I just wonder if we shouldn’t all take a little responsibility for how we move forward. If we really do care about the Ahmeds of the world, then let’s partner with him in fighting this culture of fear that has grown up around us.

The next time you see something out of the ordinary that might normally “give you pause,” ask yourself: Is this really dangerous or scary or potentially harmful, or might my mind be reacting irrationally?

Maybe it’s time to retire the slogan “Better to be safe than sorry,” and find a new one.

“Better to be rational than fearful” has a nice ring to it, no?