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Hi @paulkrugman I was in the 6th grade during 9/11. I didnt understand the significance that morning. As a Palestinian I was accustomed to watching tragedy unfold on TV. When I went to school my teacher asked me - a child - how I felt & what I thought. That was only the start.
My family & I suffered under the Bush administration and we weren't even the arab Americans who were targeted in sham trials. We weren't extradited or tortured (happened to this community too). But I still remember the terror i felt towards everyone in my majority white town
I was scared to check out library books about Islam, or arab history, because we were told people were monitoring these things. I would stay up late with anxiety if I read a leftist op ed about the arab world because I was afraid our internet was monitored too. Likely not...
But what does it take for an 11 year old to feel that way? And let's not even talk about the racism I faced at school. Still remember my gym teacher who referred to me as Gaddafi. Yeah I dont know what that means either, as I'm not Libyan. Anyway, bad take dude. Bad take.
One last thing - set aside my personal traumas, which are in the grand scheme unimportant. What the US did to Iraq is unforgivable. I will never forget reading about abu ghraib during lunch, watching the bombings. They were my people too, & that's how the country reacted to us
