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#AfterSeptember11: Hundreds share personal stories of prejudice, contempt, discrimination and racism

These are poignant accounts of those having faced the repercussion of the attacks, with no fault of their own.
#AfterSeptember11: Hundreds share personal stories of prejudice, contempt, discrimination and racism
#AfterSeptember11: Hundreds share personal stories of prejudice, contempt, discrimination and racism
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TNM

The September 11, 2001, attacks on the US is often said to be one of the deadliest terrorist attacks on the American soil.

It claimed the lives of 2,977 people and was set to drastically change the lives of many others.

As the world commemorated the fourteenth anniversary of the attack, #afterseptember11, a powerful hashtag started doing rounds on the social media. Hundreds of people shared personal stories of how the day went on to shape many of the experiences they were to have in life. Of how they had to face discrimination, prejudice and downright hatred for an incident they weren't involved in any way. 

Created by Jessica Talwar, a 19-year-old political science student at Loyola University in Chicago, the hashtag is “a collection of more than 50,000 heartbreaking accounts of people who say they were targeted for being Muslim – or often, just for having brown skin,” reported the LA Times.

Talwar, in an interview via email to LA Times, said she had created the hashtag to shed light on some of the lesser-known and not often discussed consequences of the attack.

“America needs to recognize that the trauma and repercussions of these attacks were not confined to the day of September 11, 2001 itself. Desis, Arabs, and Muslims have felt the impact of this day for 14 years," she wrote. 

Where there are followers, there are sure to be critics and one woman tweeted to the teenager saying “give America our moment.” 

Talwar told the newspaper that she felt as if her citizenship were being “stripped away". “It was as if there was some rigid dichotomy between American society and the South Asian, Muslim, and Arab communities,” she wrote.

There were also hate messages including racial slurs and threats to kill Muslims. 

She went on to write, “This movement was not intended to belittle the tragic events of September 11 itself" but it was “inexcusable” that some communities would be discriminated against because of their ethnicity or religion.

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