"My generation inherited both our beards and our brownness in a post-9/11 era. We experienced a silent war — one that did not make it on the news — in the classrooms, the subways, the airports where we found ourselves under a new type of scrutiny. The brown on our skin: a new flavor of lethal. Its beard, even more of a threat." https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alokvaidmenonn/to-body-mod-away-from-brownness-and-back

When we consider the fallout of 9/11, we must also consider its effects on those who were deemed Other in America. It is a horrifying legacy, one that to this day (twenty years after the fact) has girls in hijab being verbally attacked on the street, called 'terrorist'.

It was a pivotal moment for Muslim Americans, who found themselves suddenly front and centre in a horrible fashion. “Fifth-grader me wasn’t naïve or too young to know Muslims are in danger,” wrote one girl student about the aftermath of 9/11. https://apnews.com/article/September-11-Muslim-Americans-93f97dd9219c25371428f4268a2b33b4

Muslim children- children!- were suddenly being asked what they planned to do about terrorism, as if they were somehow responsible for the attacks.

Sikhs, too, were subjected to increasing hatred and discrimination after September 11. "Hate crime against Sikhs skyrocketed. Balbir Singh Sodhi, a 52-year-old entrepreneur in Arizona was murdered days after the tragic event—and that was only the start." https://qz.com/india/2056777/how-us-sikhs-fought-back-against-post-9-11-racism/ Turbans were ripped off the heads of men in the subway.

It wasn't just on an individual level, either. South Asians in general found themselves the targets of racial profiling. In June 2002, then Attorney General John Ashcroft announced a “Special Registration” requirement that all males from a list of Arab and Muslim countries report to the government to register and be fingerprinted. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/social/rights/profiling

This program was suspended after it failed to convict a single terrorist, but the very fact that it was instituted is indicative of the extraordinary levels of state violence and surveillance that were turned on anybody who was deemed a brown Other in post 9/11 America. When we talk about the legacy of 9/11, these ripples of discrimination, bigotry and hatred must also be confronted.