What 9/11 Taught Me About Racism, Identity, and Belonging

I distinctly remember where I was and what happened to me emotionally when 9/11 happened.

I was a grade ten student. It was around 6 a.m. My dad was ready for work, and together, we watched the second plane enter the last unaffected Twin Tower.

On his way out the door to the mill, where he worked for forty-seven years with great pride, my dad said, “This type of violence happens all over the world, all the time, but it only matters or receives public attention if it happens in America.”

Maybe he wasn’t so articulate, but that’s how I recall the event now.

I remember going to school that day and knowing, deeply knowing, to keep my dad’s opinions to my motherfucking self because that type of talk could get me killed (figuratively and literally).

My dad was pro-Saddam Hussein (relax yourself, not in the way you might think, and maybe I should write an article about it, but just relax yourself; it's not in the way you think… it's in the best of all evils…maybe how we might see the Clintons). Because of his influence, I actually wrote a pro-Hussein paper in my undergraduate degree. I received an A on that paper.

I have family members who had to flee Pakistan to India, my mother being one of them and my…