Young Hate
This time of year is always a very controversial time for me. When this event occurred, I lived in New Haven, Connecticut, which is two hours by train away from New York City. I remember that I had needed to miss a class, and since I saw my professor afterwards, I went to go apologize. I had no idea what happened because I had no television and I had been working on an assignment, so I had been avoiding the internet. When I saw my professor, I apologized, because it seemed like she was angry, and she said, “Didn’t you hear about what happened?” That was how I heard about the explosions from 9/11. Obviously, Yale University is full of people from New York City and the surrounding areas, and the World Trade Center is full of people whose family members were attending Yale. Fun fact: Barbara Bush, one of the Bush II twins, was attending Yale University at the time, so I had every reason to be concerned. The inability to see what happened on television made me that much more fearful for what would follow.
The common myth about 9/11 is that it created this deep sense of unity throughout the entire nation. That is a lie, because it created a sense of White unity throughout the entire nation. All of a sudden, poor and rich White people finally were able to agree on one thing: non-White people were dangerous. From the liberals to the conservatives, from the demure to the ostentatious, most everyone believed that BIPOCQ were dangerous. It was absolutely acceptable to keep us broke, hungry, and begging to keep everything safe. A lot of people like to credit Cult45 with being the instigator of racial violence, and I would ask that people to stop obsessing over a fool. Yes, he did some really atrocious things, and yes, he acted like a clown, but he was merely a symptom of what September 11 wrought in the United States of America. People were thrilled about the wars, which is exactly what politicians and military contractors wanted, and people were thrilled about going to the Middle East. Those who had been following the ball the entire time were extremely confused as to why we were going to a different place from where the terrorists had come. BIPOCQ knew that there was no point to anything by the time the war announcement was made.
Even though racial justice has always been an issue, the inability to see the magnitude of racial violence allowed us — to a certain extent — the privilege of being able to live lives without fear. 9/11 took that took that privilege away from us. Every person who was born between the late 70s through the 80s is aware that September 11, 2001 was the beginning of tacit consent to be a public extremist. There was a constant stream of hate crimes that increased after that time, and everyone loved to being able to say, “That’s the price that we pay for freedom!” There was intense scrutiny of BIPOCQ in public, and nobody cared. There were children getting harassed and beat up while teachers and administrators allowed it because of the price of “freedom.” There were mosques being shot up and bombed, and that was the price of freedom. We had phones and internet, so everyone could find out about everything so much faster. Even though there was no prominent social media until 2004, there was instant messaging and chats, and all of us used them. All of the fear in the United States for BIPOCQ in public spaces was extremely triggered during that time.
Everyone loves to obsess about the violence under Cult45, and not enough people consider the extreme racial violence that skyrocketed under George Bush II — as I refer to him because his family is a monarchy. There is little recognition that during his reign, bubble after bubble after bubble was formed. Because he had a picture taken of Michelle Obama hugging him, people are kind of done thinking about the monster that he was. One picture, and everybody just forgot that he made our lives nightmarish. People just forgot that was when housing prices went out of control, and so many people became homeless. The tech bubble was apparently a movie plot with a horrific ending of Asian and African exploitation. People forgot about the fact that so many people were going to college, and we watched all this money disappear with the housing crash in 2008 — that officials bribed Obama to relieve in 2009.
People also forget that the World Trade Center was a financial target. This had nothing to do with actual people because the government does not care, as it proved throughout this pandemic. We have seen through all of these 18 months that nobody cares about whether people die. The issue was that money was attacked, which is why those with control and resources have been obsessed with getting people to return to work, produce, and consume again. Money is the only thing that we care about in this country, and the only thing that we will fight to preserve. We went to the oil countries to go start a fake war, instead of considering how to shore up this nation after a loss, which should tell every citizen everything they need to know.
Another myth is that racism and extremism will disappear in time, and all the young people will be more progressive. People who are not even old can remember the damage that the extremism from 9/11 brought on this entire nation, because it has been rising for the last 20 years. Abigail Fisher came into prominence during this time because of the extreme mentality that all BIPOCQ people were stupid, and there was no way that any of us could have beaten her. However, if she grew up when it was all right to bomb Middle Eastern countries because the money was attacked and that it was all right to refer to the President as a “monkey,” then of course she would sue the University of Texas at Austin multiple times. How dare those animals get her spot!
This was also the era when the rich Stanford rapist Brock Turner believed that he, as a White man at Stanford, had the right to rape an Asian woman. Chanel Miller did not even come forward with her identity for years due to fear of the backlash against her on behalf of a rich, White, male Stanford graduate. The Atlanta story this year is less than surprising when people have grown up in a nation where it is alright to violate BIPOCQ. It is clear that the only thing we care about is making sure that the White people in this nation get a fair shake and the benefit of the doubt — abusive behavior is sanctioned after 9/11.
Who can forget Dylann Roof, who decided to make the church the most dangerous place for Black people in South Carolina? If people are allowed to shoot BIPOCQ, carry AK-47s and AR-15s, and harass and commit hate crimes everywhere in the name of “freedom” after 9/11, what else would he know? What else is he aware of? This has been going on for 20 years. There are people who have reached the age of majority who know nothing other than it is acceptable to attack BIPOCQ, and millions will support you. People want to blame a presidential election in 2016 — in truth, that is 15 years too late for when it became alright to be violently racist in public again.
In response, what did BIPOCQ do? We did everything we could to prove that we were safe. With the enhancements of technology, we did even more. We made ourselves physically sick, working constantly; we made ourselves mentally unwell because we have been so cognizant of what it means when we are seen as a threat. Black women became the most educated demographic because we knew that we were targets as long as we were seen as threats. For those who cynically see that as normal competition, no. If you go to any BIPOCQ household, we know that people are watching us constantly, and everybody was allowed to do that as harshly as humanly possible.
Because the attacks were done with flights, I remember going from loving flying — because I had dreamed about travel — to hating flying, because I was definitely going to get searched and people were definitely going to look at me sideways. I had to watch my language because I could be a terrorist in the minds of the dominant narrative. No one cared, significantly, about BIPOCQ being harassed in airports — and many BIPOCQ have families that are outside the country and across the nation. The whole notion that a place of transit was a threat for a multitude of people in the United States did not faze the majority of the population. We were constantly told that such was the price that we had to pay for freedom. No one cared that we were worried, that we took all the airport precautions, and were extra safe; they just got to enjoy say how much freedom they got to enjoyed.
Beginning on September, 11, 2001, the seed of hatred in this country was watered with blood and destruction. As an empire, we are so obsessed with not being vulnerable that for the 3000 lives that died, we have taken more than 200% of that this through false wars and this pandemic. No one wants to acknowledge that we love doing two things: 1) talking about how there are Black people in the White House, and 2) talking about how we hate Cult45. We ignore all of the racial violence that led up to the demagogue taking place. We ignore all the hateful behavior that we justified because something bad happened. We ignore the people who came to our country with specialized degrees and talents who cannot even prove that they have specialized degrees and talents because we bombed the places where those records are kept.
The only thing we talk about is the White unity that was formed as a result of 9/11. It is as if in response to the planes crashing, the United States said, “You are now free to hate about the country.” This is one of the reasons why way too many White people refuse to abide by quarantine standards, wear masks, or get vaccines. Oh, they can lie and come up with some other reason why they hate that, but their underlying message is this: “You’re telling us, ‘No’? You’re telling us something we have to do? What do you think we are, niggers? You must be confused.” That is all. This is what happens when you have a country that said that White supremacy is freedom for everybody. Until we get that right, there is no authentic honoring of those who were lost on September 11.
For further information on race and the built environment, check out deciphercity.org!
