Strange Fruit

The suspension of Ahmed Mohamed had just hit the headlines when we recorded this week's show. The gifted ninth-grader from Irving, Texas, built a digital clock at home, and brought it to school to show his teachers. And his English teacher assumed it was a bomb. Police were called, and despite Ahmed's unwavering insistence that his invention was a clock, he was suspended from school, arrested, and taken out in handcuffs. "I felt like I was a criminal," he told MSNBC's Chris Hayes. "I felt like I was a terrorist." Since our time in the studio, public support for Ahmed has been swift and abundant, much of it bearing the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed. He's been invited to visit MIT, the Mars Rover project, Facebook, and even the White House. Many kids of color get an abrupt and ugly education in racism the first time they are profiled. It happened to Ahmed this week, and it happens to young black men who are hassled (or worse) by police and other authority figures. But since African-American studi