I was scrolling through Twitter and came across the below thread:
This breaks my heart
Stories that are never heard.#afterseptember11 💔 pic.twitter.com/FePg2DLH8L
— StanceGrounded (@_SJPeace_) September 12, 2019
Now, this is not to take attention away from 9/11 victims and those affected by loss. This thread interested me because I came across an earlier tweet where someone mentioned the infamous “Mess with one of us, you mess with all of us” scene from Spider-Man (2002).
Scenes like this are supposed to represent how united America, and New Yorkers in particular, were following 9/11. While this Spider-Man scene (and another in the Andrew Garfield reboot) might be a bit on the nose, the notion of a truly united NY is very uplifting, but also very romanticized.
The stories of innocent Muslims in New York, and brown people as a whole, paint a very different picture and it is good to see a dose of reality get injected into the mainstream “we are the children” narrative that is spun every time September 11 comes around.
I don’t assume these specific stories are true. The statistics on spikes in hate crimes on brown people following 9/11 are all the evidence I need.