9/11’s Legacy for a South Asian Washingtonian
Angana Shah
It was just after 9, I was running late for work. My housemate came to my room, looking stunned. She said “Angana, I was watching TV and a plane hit the World Trade Center. We thought it was an accident but then saw a second plane hit it.” My thoughts? “She’s so young, she must be confused.” I went downstairs and there it was, a terrorist attack happening in real time. Then we heard that the Pentagon had been hit. We were not watching it, we were IN IT.
Rumors flew: the Mall is on fire, the State Department has been hit! All of the rumored targets were within 3 miles of us. All the rumors were wrong but we had no way of knowing what was happening. Downtown offices emptied and the Metro (subway) overflowed with people trying to get home. Our Australian housemate’s parents called on the landline, as cell phones were not working. I assured them that their son would be safe walking from Georgetown to our house in Columbia Heights, as there were no incidents on the way–three housemates were at Georgetown. I repeated the same assurance to the other parents that called on the house phone, while letting my own family know I was fine from the same phone, fearing even that would go out before I could reassure them.
As we spent the rest of the day watching tv, I was scanning my mind for anyone that may have been flying that day. My brother was stranded in Jamaica on his honeymoon. Relief. Oh no, my dear friend Meha was on Cape Cod, was she on that flight from Boston? She wasn’t but it took me a couple of hours to get that relief.
Then came the aftermath. A Sikh American in Arizona was murdered at his gas station by a man looking to shoot “towel-heads”. Hate crimes against South Asians were reported across the country. Male Indian friends traveling for work were pulled off planes. Family members said we should stop wearing Indian clothes and speaking Gujarati.
My Indian friend said, “What do you expect?” so she had expected this. But I disagreed – hate crimes against us are to be expected?
Another friend, not Indian, said “They can’t tell the difference between an Arab and an Indian” as another friend replied “That would have made it ok?”
President Bush addressed the post-9/11 racial violence. He asked Americans to exercise tolerance. “TOLERANCE”? We were to be “tolerated”? What I wanted and expected Bush to say is “You are killing your fellow Americans, you are giving the terrorists more victims, do not give them that.” I wanted to hear him say “If you kill another American we will come after you.” But instead, he addressed white Americans by gently asking them to “tolerate” us.
So, 9/11 gave me several lessons in white supremacy:
We should expect violence against our community if someone who looks like us commits a crime.
There are gradations of brown people in whether or not they deserve violence.
And most chilling, my own country was told to tolerate me, not treat me like the fellow grieving American that I am. No, I am something to tolerate. The other who is ALLOWED to be here, “tolerated”.
Then, 15 years later white supremacy became “great” again. In 2024, the right spreads false stories about Haitian immigrants squatting in apartment buildings and committing gratuitous violence. A party that is supported by at least 30% of Americans wants “mass deportations” without due process, which violates your civil rights as an American citizen
While 9/11, and 15 years later, Trump, showed me how many fellow citizens don’t consider me to be a “real” American, I refuse to capitulate. I am, I always have been, and always will be, an American. This is my home, my country. Full stop. White supremacy will not win.
Angana Shah is a social justice lobbyist and resides in in Metro Detroit.
