Fourteen years after 9/11, the United States remains in an artificially sustained state of emergency best encapsulated by the oft-repeated Orwellian catchphrase “If you see something, say something.” This ubiquitous edict and its variants still appear in transportation hubs and public buildings across the country, nudging us to never take anything at face value, treating every perceived oddity and fleeting discomfort as a potential threat.

It was this poisonous mentality that was at work Monday, when school administrators in Irving, Texas, had a Muslim teenager arrested for bringing a homemade digital clock to school after a teacher said it looked like a bomb. Ahmed Mohamed, a talented 14-year-old with a well-known aptitude for electronic tinkering, told The Dallas Morning News that he built the clock in 20 minutes the previous night to impress his engineering instructor. By 3 p.m., Ahmed was suspended from school and being escorted out of McArthur High School in handcuffs.

The Dallas paper reported that police “may yet charge him with making a hoax bomb” and had an “ongoing investigation” into the device, despite being clearly and repeatedly shown that it is, in fact, a clock. But this easily verifiable fact hardly mattered. The school immediately called the police. Upon first meeting Ahmed, the paper reported, one of the officers exclaimed, “Yup. That’s who I thought it was,” making Ahmed feel “suddenly conscious of his brown skin and his name.”

On Twitter, the absurd story was rightly seized upon as an ugly confluence of tech illiteracy, overpolicing and deeply entrenched Islamophobia. The case quickly drew outrage and support from the tech world and beyond as the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed began trending. The influential blogger Anil Dash started circulating an online form allowing people to send their good wishes to Ahmed’s family, while others called for the police officers and school administrators involved to be fired. On Wednesday, the police chief announced that charges won’t be filed and Ahmed received his invitation to the White House. But his school maintained the suspension until Thursday.

Ahmed’s treatment is neither anomalous nor surprising. It’s merely a symptom of the same bigotry and irrational paranoia the U.S. government’s never-ending war on terror is responsible for helping to incubate — the negative effects of which are routinely and overwhelmingly felt by Muslims and people of color.

Particularly revealing of this mentality was a shocking letter about the incident that McArthur High principal Daniel Cummings sent to school parents. Rather than explain the situation and apologize to Ahmed’s family, the letter depicts the violation of his civil rights as “a good time to remind your child how important it is to immediately report any suspicious items and/or suspicious behavior they observe,” even while acknowledging “the item discovered did not pose a threat to your child’s safety.”