His Name Is Ahmed Mohamed, Not 'Clock Kid'

It was reported this week that Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old Texas teen who was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school , is receiving a full-ride academic scholarship in Qatar.

It's certainly amazing news for Mohamed and his family, who received rousing on the Internet after the teen's arrest in September. But there's also been a subtle, off-putting trend in the reporting of this latest development. Numerous outlets, from New York magazine to Slate , have referred to Mohamed as "Clock Kid" in their headlines. 

But... can we not?

Yes, it's a pithy, headline-friendly moniker, an easy way to quickly get across that the kid who built that clock is the subject of this article. But Ahmed Mohamed has a name, and as innocuous as using "Clock Kid" might seem, it devalues the severity of what actually happened to him.

His story has, ultimately, been a positive one. From being unfairly profiled by his teacher to meeting the president of the United States and now, getting the academic opportunity of a lifetime, Mohamed's story is a best-case scenario. But there are tons of kids (and adults, for that matter) who deal with this kind of religious and racial profiling who don't get a press conference or a tweet from POTUS.

"Clock Kid," for all its expedience, subtly colors Mohamed's story as just a harmless misadventure. It wasn't. The initial horror at what happened to Mohamed has devolved into a kind of feel-good human interest story where we seem to only vaguely acknowledge that the reason we even know who he is is because he was unfairly arrested as a suspected terrorist. Over a clock.  

That's what made the #IStandWithAhmed campaign so important -- it named Mohamed, acknowledged his humanity, and reminded us that we were standing with him against Islamaphobia and racism. "Clock Kid" may be seemingly cute, but all it does is mask a problem that we still, unfortunately, insist on avoiding. 

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