What happens when they aren’t geniuses?

People were outraged when Ahmed was arrested, because clearly he’s a genius. Collectively, we saw a skinny kid with a geeky NASA shirt and we were outraged. Suddenly, we had politicians, celebrities and CEOs lining up to profit on the situation and build up positive PR.

Meanwhile, there is a very real school-to-prison pipeline and it often begins with harsh penalties for minor infractions. Kids are getting suspended and even arrested for nonviolent offenses, like too many cell phone violations or excessive tardies that are outside of their control.

Unfortunately, many of those students who are being arrested right now aren’t geniuses. Many of them are students with special needs. However, because their minor infractions weren’t evidence of giftedness, they didn’t get a phone call from ed tech CEOs or a tweet from the president or a letter from George Takei.

Instead, these students ended up in juvenile detention centers and jails. Thousands of them. Few people in power is advocating for them.

So, while people can now point out the “happy ending” with Ahmed, the truth is that the systemic injustice remains ever present in the form of a school-to-prison pipeline that unfairly targets minority students.