Actually, I'm an Alien

As many of you may know, this past Monday was the 16 year anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Many of my students have been getting assignments which required them to do some reflection on the event and talk about how it has changed the world in which we live in today. All of my students were born after the attacks and needed to ask someone else to talk about the changes. I never really took the time to think about it, but as I was helping them I realized that as a brown woman, 9/11 changed my world and it can be summed up in one word: Racism.

Racism has always been apart of our history but the events of 9/11 made them more apparent. I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood and as a result a lot of my friends are black. Often times the topic of our discussions were about how they had to deal with racism, and learning about the civil rights movement and slavery was a big deal to them. I understood the world in which they lived, but I never experienced it. I never had the experience of being followed in a store or accused of doing something wrong or kicked out of class for no reason. A few days following the 9/11 attacks, my friends and I were sitting around talking about what was happening and what we had learned from the news. One of my friends stopped the conversation to ask me, “Hareena, Why you mad? Your people are the ones who did it.” As an elementary school kid, I was overcome by shock by what was coming out of my black friend’s mouth… did all of my friends feel the same way? As I tried to respond I did not even know where to begin, needless to say I never viewed this “friend” the same way again. In that moment my mind went through so many different responses. I didn’t have the time or the proper vocabulary to unpack what was going through my thoughts.

If the fact that I share the same skin tone as the people on TV does not make them any more MY people than they are his. At the end of the day we are all human, and our skin color is only a small part of who we are. Even if I was from the same part of the world, it does not mean that I was happy these attacks happened. Any terrorists who claims responsibility for any attack gain some level of happiness by inflicting pain on others, when this is the case they are their own people.

Religion… at the time the media made it very clear that the terrorist group claimed ties to Islam. As a result anyone who was Muslim or looked like they could be Muslim was a target. I was not raised in the Muslim faith, I was in fact raised in the Sikh faith and guess what? The Terrorist on TV wore turbans, and many men and women in my religion wear turbans daily. The first hate crime post 9/11 was not a Muslim man but a Sikh man. Balbir Singh Sodhi was gunned down at his gas station in Arizona, he was called a “Towel-Head” in the process. Even if Sodhi was a Muslim man, it did not make the incident ok. What connection could an innocent, working man have on the events of the terrorist attacks? If anything it showed the level of ignorance people have and the lack in their ability to be critical thinkers. My classmate knew me for years, yet he still made an assumption based on the color of my skin.

My classmate identified himself as Black and I could have very well judged him by the color of his skin and never befriended him. For someone who grew up Black in this country and after what we learn in school, I was shocked that he made this comment. When the suppressor successfully puts the suppressed against each other he wins … divide and conquer. During the Civil Rights Era, Blacks had to deal with a lot of hate and violence and many could argue that it is still going on today. After 9/11 happened that same hate and violence was aimed toward anyone who looked Muslim, anyone who looked like me. When my Black classmate made this comment to me I felt alone, and I didn’t know who my friends were. Where the rest of them thinking the same thing? Perhaps he was the only one bold enough to say it. Whatever the case may be, it was the ultimate act of “othering.” “Othering” is the act of pointing out why someone else is different from you, and not trying to bridge the gap to build a relationship. I was not surprised when he othered me, but I was shocked that someone I have known for years would think I was in some way connect to such a tragic and violent event and was happy about the outcome. This is just one of the many comments I had to deal with post 9/11 and talking to my students made me realize not much has changed.

My students were saying a lot of mind opening things that left me shocked. I asked my student a hypothetical question, “if you didn’t know anything about me and you saw me walking down the street, would you label me and an American?” He laughed and said, “No, I would say you’re Indian.” I then asked him what he identifies himself as, he said “Indian,” I then told him that I identify as an “American.” It took me years to get to this identity and I've written about it before, take a look here. My student’s simple answer told me a lot about how our society has not changed that much in 16 years. This country was built on the backs of slaves and immigrants, so why is it that in the 241 years the US has been around, we are STILL not considered Americans? It is hard to be part of something if you are always singled out for being different, but being different is all I know. When I go to India I am always singled out for being that “Tall American Girl,” and here I am the “Tall Indian Girl.” Different is all I know, perhaps being different is what it means to be an American. Our skin color, cultural practices etc. make us unique as individuals, which should be celebrated and not othered.

One positive I took away from the conversation with my students is that they are learning what the Islamic faith entails. However, the information is still coming from a place of othering. My student asked, “is it true that Muslims, don't believe in killing people?” I laughed at this question and responded with, “Isn’t it true that people shouldn’t kill people?” Not killing another human being should be common sense, and as far as I know that is a characteristic of ALL faiths. Perhaps we need to stop teaching the differences and focus on the similarities. Teach to love one another and not to hate.

Just last month there was a white supremacist gathering that ended violently and many of my friends were angered and shocked at how in 2017, after the first Black president there could be such open hate. Why are we not labeling that event as a terrorist attack? Was it because the color of their skin? Where they not unlawfully using violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political arms? That is the very definition of terrorist. So how much have things changed in 16 years?

At the end of the day no matter what you believe, we are Humans first. No one is black, white, brown, or yellow; when we bleed we all bleed the same red. It's time we stop cutting one another to find out. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” We cannot become a unified world by othering, only unity can do that.