To all the brown people out there today (especially): YOU ARE AMERICAN ENOUGH. You make this country better and you deserve to be here and be treated with respect.

I see a lot of folks trying to reframe 9/11 as when magically for a moment we stopped being racist?

On 9/11 I was in Boston, having just arrived to the lab when I /2001 heard about the tragedy. Over the course of the next several days, I was yelled at from passing cars, called a sand N-word, had my hat knocked off my head walking to MIT.

It's 1991, I'm walking home from school as a rock flies past me. It's the (first) Persian Gulf war. I'm confused as I'm Iranian and not Iraqi, but that subtelty is lost on most. I decide to go by "Bob" at school.

Summer 1999, I'm flying between Oakland and Seattle. I'm stopped at airport security again. It's the 5th time in 6 flights. Security actually got better for me *after* 9/11 when they realized random searches were more effective.

I've heard the horror stories from my dad in following the hostage crisis and rising tensions with Iran in the late 70s and early 80s and talked about them here before. Getting attacked in the streets.

The parties where I was told to "go home" when I didn't agree with the choices being made in America. You want me to go back to.... Oakland?

Part of the reason why I did a red, white, and blue haircut for the Mars landing was to prove that I *am* American.

It shouldn’t be that way. I study spacecraft failure for a reason - to avoid making the same mistakes again.

There's a tendency to remember the past as better, which is also why so many people seem to want to return there, but I am here to make the future better, and to remind us that if we don't learn from our failures that won't happen.

With love from this Iranian-American