I appreciate the effort and kudos on being proactive, but this is not an effective way of talking to someone whose mind you are hoping to change. This will be read in a positive light only by people who already agree with the author and are already upset about the situation.<p>In the very first paragraph, the author mocks the people he's talking to ("Much to my surprise, this was not a satire article on The Onion"). Then he resorts to hyperbole ("inexplicably horrifying"), diverges from the topic at hand to get in a jab at someone else ("as much as I like to criticize our New York Police Department"), resorts to sarcasm ("Congratulations"), insults the people he's talking to ("such a severe lapse of applicable common sense"), and finally basically blames them for the downfall of a whole country ("Reading news stories like this makes me quite ashamed to be an American; I want to love my country and all that it stands for, but as long as this is the new precedent that we are setting, I can no longer do so.").<p>This style of writing is great for riling up people who already agree with you, but it's not effective at reaching people who don't. If you want to reach someone, you need to respect them, listen, assume honesty and good intentions, focus on the issue not the individual, and all the other aphorisms you've heard about dealing with other people. It does no good to put the person you are trying to persuade on the defensive.<p>Or in one sentence: You catch more flies with honey.
"Similarly, as much as I like to criticize our New York Police Department, upon having my bag searched on the subway they understood that an electronics project is not a bomb. Unfortunately - there is one variable that I did not account for - I am white and have religious beliefs in accordance with that of the general population. What if I wasn’t?"<p>Well, you've got your answer. I've had Arduino kits pulled out of my bag and seriously questioned. Part of white privilege is that we are usually believed when we claim it's just a science project.
You should write Hollywood; it is their electronics profiling that has everyone but engineers thinking that every homemade clock is a bomb. Why? Because every homemade clock we ever see (we only see them on TV) IS a bomb!
In case the author of this letter sees this comment: the articles I've seen spell his name "Ahmed." It's spelled "Amed" a few times in the letter
A real engineer probably will not say "on behalf of all engineers", nobody in this case is 100% innocent, plus don't jump into conclusion too fast at this internet age until you do know the stories from both sides fully.