Sept. 11, 2001, was the first time I’d seen color used so evidently as a means to generalize and divide. I was only 14 years old, entering my first week of high school in the suburbs of Long Island, less than an hour outside of New York City, on the day my worldview changed.
The majority of my classmates were mostly white and I’d always stuck out like a sore thumb as a multiracial American – born to a Puerto Rican and Italian-American mother and an Indian immigrant father in 1987. My olive skin tone, bushy eyebrows, dark brown curly hair, and funny-sounding name made me an easy target for kids already searching for any physical differences to pick on. Even the few pockets of various Asian and Hispanic American students tended to stick closely with one another, socializing only with their own kind, minus a few misfits with whom I became close.
Though it hurt feeling like an outsider, I was used to feeling uniquely alone. Growing up in three vastly different cultures meant I never fit in, not even with cousins or elders. I was too light-skinned among the members of my father’s Desi community, too ethnic for the Italian side who’d ascended into white middle-class status, and too suburban for my inner-city Puerto Rican relatives living in the Bronx.
In my mind, I’d always lived somewhere in the gray area of society. At home, my parents never treated me any differently or forced me to identify with any one side over another. They knew they were rebels in their own right, having broken traditions to marry outside of their cultures.
However, when they moved the family from Queens to Suffolk County, an invisible line of segregation existed among townships, and residents on our side were just beginning to get comfortable with diversity.
On the morning of Sept. 11, I was in second period Earth Science when my principal interrupted all classes to inform us that the World Trade Center had been attacked, allowing all teachers to turn on their TV sets to watch the news. Gasps and nervous murmurs floated around the room as we tried to make sense of the two buildings ablaze on our screen. As the bell rang and we flooded into the halls, panic quickly set in. Students swapped theories as to why our beloved towers were being targeted.
I heard one kid scream that Muslims had committed the attacks.
My teachers and classmates witnessed the destruction of our city, with our eyes, staring at television sets in our classrooms. In real time, we collectively viewed horrific images of planes exploding into the Twin Towers and civilians covered in soot. Within hours, images of Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban were on the television screen as the suspected architects of the attack. Footage of dangerous, brown-skinned men covered our screens, adding to the fury and fervor brewing in many Americans that day.
As I watched the uproar in my school, I was reminded of the division I had experienced my entire life.
I saw fellow Indian and Pakistani students singled out due to their skin tone and “foreign” sounding names. A few of my brown-skinned friends got punched, shoved and name-called. Students were lashing out at people who looked anything like someone of Middle Eastern descent.
One Sikh friend, who wore a turban as part of his religion, faced ridicule from ignorant students teasing him about his likeness to bin Laden.
I didn’t face the same mockery as my other brown classmates, and I felt guilty for it. I was incensed by how superficial we could become, unable to see beyond surface labels.
Following that fateful day, FBI data now shows that hate crimes jumped to 481 incidents before dropping by more than half in the ensuing years.
Twenty years later, I’d like to believe we’ve come a long way, but with Islamophobia once again on the rise and increases in discrimination against Indian Americans, I’m reminded again of how Sept. 11 brought division for so many Americans. And I wonder if we’ll ever be able to get beyond it.
Raj Tawney writes about race, culture, food and the human experience from his multi-racial American experience. He recently completed a proposal for a memoir centered around his identity. Find him at rajtawney.com.
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