Nine days ago, hijacked planes swandived into skyscrapers—the handiwork of terrorists, grim architects of hate. Apocalyptic blasts left a senseless slaughter in their wake, scarring the psyches of a generation. I saw a nation reeling with sadness and disbelief.
But we are a resilient people. From broken glass and steel shrapnel, a renewed spirit springs forth. American pride, whose presence lay submerged beneath the complications of identity politics, now quickly emerges as the mantra du jour.
Even a careless eye will latch onto visible patriotic symbols surfacing in all the familiar places. Stars and stripes grace brick walls of campus courtyards and dangle from the windows of club buildings. In the street, pedestrians wear metallic flag pins on the lapels of their jean jackets.
It is morning: I wake up to the quiet hum of static over the airwaves. Through the fire door, my neighbor leaves his radio tuned to the news all day and all night. It echoes through the walls. I get up and put on a shirt with red, white, and blue piping on the sleeves. I have always been fond of this garment, but today I wear the colors as an intentional statement.
On the way to lecture: I run into student volunteers collecting for the Red Cross in front of the Science Center. One holds out a plastic jug, swollen already, and I press a couple of green bills through the bottleneck. I nod quietly to myself, impressed with the campus’ philanthropic spirit.
Closing time in downtown Boston, post-clubbing: Exiting the Roxy, I notice a black limo passing. Four small American flags flutter on the vehicle—ambassadorial style. Drunk men peer out of its darkened windows, waving 40s of malt liquor in hand and yelling, “Go America! Go America! Go America!” All the party people, standing on a sidewalk still wet from rain, reward this chant with a tipsy round of applause.
Such displays of unity in the face of tragedy arouse deep patriotic feelings in me, along with symptoms akin to romantic love: an excited pulse, tensed limbs, watery eyes, choked throat. I am filled with pride to be an American.
Though it can be both beautiful and sublime, tainted nationalism can sour into its own strain of hate. When used ignorantly, nationalism may rip at the fabric of unity, unraveling the precious ties which are our strength.
A couple days ago, I received a distressed phone call from a close female friend of mine. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Someone just kicked me in the head,” she said. My friend is a photographer. She had been chilling out at Hempfest, a “smokeout love-in” at Boston Common. Four skaters walked by her, each holding a corner of an enormous American flag. My friend was so taken by this sight that she readied her camera. Just then, a man ran up from out of nowhere and kicked her in the head. He screamed, “Fucking Russians. What are they doing here? They shouldn’t be here.” On the grassy field, a couple “Make Love, Not War” signs flapped in the breeze. There is a red welt where the angry man’s shin struck my friend’s neck.
The morning of the bombings, my mother called me from California in a panic. She calmed down after I assured her that I was safe and healthy. Later that day, she e-mailed me a long letter. My mother wrote: “With today’s disaster, there will surely be a rise in hate crimes and racism in the near future. You are a person of color and a child of immigrants. It is better to keep a low profile at times like these.” Her warning proved to be prophetic.
Numerous Arab-American groups (including the Islamic Society at Harvard) have issued public statements condemning the terrorist attacks and expressing their moral outrage about the bombings. Despite all of this, Arab-Americans and those who may appear to be Arab-Americans are still being targeted in retributive acts of hate.
Bullet holes riddle the walls of mosques in Florida and Texas. Hate graffiti and broken glass litter the sight of many Muslim-owned businesses around the country. At numerous American colleges, Muslim students have received death threats. An acquaintance of mine, who has first and last names of Arab derivation, was fired without explanation from his hardware store job last week, two days after the attack.
This is the process whereby victims become perpetrators. Xenophobia causes a people to turn inward and cannibalize themselves. A Muslim friend admitted to me that she was afraid of living with her own identity.
Imagine, she said, of being afraid to say your full name because your last name sounds Muslim. Of being afraid to open your mouth in public because your foreign accent would arouse suspicion. Of being frightened of wearing your religious garments because onlookers might grimace with disgust. Or of being afraid to visit your mosque because you might be caught in the crossfire of drive-by shootings. The unrelenting threat of having your identity perpetually misconceived and questioned is nothing less than psychological terrorism.
Last Tuesday’s bombings have been compared to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II. Indeed, the resemblance is uncanny. Both tragedies exposed the vulnerability of a supposed superpower. Both were followed by hate crimes toward innocent American citizens of a particular ethnic descent. After Pearl Harbor, 110,000 innocent Japanese-Americans were sent to internment camps, imprisoned because they were suspected of being “saboteurs” and “spies.”
This summer, I thought a lot about identity politics and the dangers of racial profiling while working at the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco. As an aspiring civil rights attorney, working at the ACLU was a dream job, and I spent nine happy weeks reading over case files. One of the old cases I reviewed was Korematsu vs. United States. Fred Korematsu was an activist who defied the internment camp order. The ACLU argued against Japanese internment before the Supreme Court, and in a disgraceful ruling, the Court decided in favor of the continued imprisonment of Japanese-Americans. Here is a case where American freedom was put on trial. It lost.
Anger toward terrorists is certainly understandable, justified and necessary. But to unleash this anger on fellow citizens would be a folly. They are just as traumatized. The terrorists who perpetrated these heinous bombings would delight at the thought of America turning on itself. The white American is clearly not the only kind of American who has loyalty and pride for her nation. There is no longer one definitive American poster child. There never really was.
Out of this tragedy arises reinvigorated notions of liberal democracy and freedom. America’s great beauty and strength lies in its multicolorful populace, a strength that is fueled by diversity. An assault of this magnitude has the potential to rupture what we perceive as already tenuous bonds between us. We must turn the lens inward and seize the opportunity to re-define and reflect on what it means to be American.
Terry E-E Chang ’02, a Economics concentrator living in Dunster House, is a founder of WINC (Women in Color), an artistic/political collective on campus. She is welcolmed back to the FM family after a two-year hiatus.
