(ThyBlackMan.com) The streets were a writhing mass of panic. I remember looking down from the 8th floor of a Washington, D.C., office building and seeing, literally, the city – hundreds of people in business suits, dresses and ties – clawing at each other and the air, desperately trying to make it to wherever there was safety.
Traffic was at a standstill. Cabs, cars, and buses waded impotent in the current of the living; all locust-like and swarming. There were honks, and engines revving, and there were screams. Shouts of horror jumped up stories into the air for our ears to catch as the staff of my publishing company watched in 
growing horror at the streets below, from the 8th floor of our building, in Washington,D.C., on September 11, 2001.
In D.C., everything was about misinformation. There was no one large scene of destruction, not within eyesight anyway. The Pentagon is far from the sight of your average Washingtonian. The building is in North Virginia, so few people on foot actually saw what happened. We only heard about it.
From the frantic hysteria of ourK Street office, we thought the Mall was on fire. The State Department, someone said, just got hit by a car bomb. We have to leave. We have to escape.
From radios and the phone calls of concerned loved ones we pieced together what had happened: Someone had attacked us, and D.C. was the primary target. Oh, we knew New York had been hit too, but that’s just the fireworks to announce their presence…we are the ones they want, we thought. The White House, the Capitol…the WashingtonMonument…we are the targets. And we weren’t entirely wrong in our arrogance, they had sent two planes for us after all.
Shady Records was 80 seconds away from the towers
Some cowards fucked with the wrong building, they meant to hit ours – Eminem
Even 10 years later, the memories run thick; I try to ignore them. I’m too emotional. I didn’t know anyone who died that day. Me and mine, for the most part, made it out unscathed. There’s just something about having a heightened imagination that forces you – in your mind, at least – to put yourself in the position of those who had died that morning. What would I have done?
The mere thought sends trembles up my spine, because I probably wouldn’t have done anything different; at least not anything more heroic that what those brave souls did that day. September 11, the day of the tragedy, was one of few moments in our existence when people came as close to being what God had intended as they ever have.
Unfortunately, it was only the bright and beautiful spark that heralded the inferno of hatred, bigotry and fear that, a decade later, still burns hot and hungry through the landscape of the American conscience.
September 11, 2001, began America’s new Dark Ages. Everything about our society regressed. We became angrier, dumber, quicker to react; we became more bigoted, more apathetic, and we shunned logic. Sure there was that initial sense of national solidarity and a shared sense of victimization that held us together, but soon after that things became infected.
Things became politicized. And I mean the next day. All politicians wore flag pins out of faux solidarity like a uniform. We were headed to Iraq via Afghanistan and we all needed to be on the same bus. Of course, by that time it was no longer about the attack or justice, it was about oil and revenge. It was about money and old grudges. It was us against them – Good vs. Evil. And problems began to arise when we started to notice that “evil” was beginning to look more and more like regular old minorities.
All they talk about is terrorism on television
They tell you to listen, but they don’t really tell you they mission
They funded Al-Qaeda, and now they blame the Muslim religion
Even though Bin Laden, was a CIA tactician – Immortal Technique
Of course, Hip hop was the first to ring the alarm bells. It usually is. Afghanistan made sense, I guess. They were protecting the terrorists and that’s who we wanted: the terrorists. But then the country’s sight shifted to Iraq and there was just something about it that rubbed a lot of black people the wrong way.
Frighteningly quick, terrorist began to mean Muslim, which soon became synonomous with person of Middle Eastern descent. Eventually, anyone who wasn’t white, Christian and frantically waving an American flag was the enemy. We mowed into both wars with the vigor of the victimized. We just wanted someone else to hurt. So there were missiles, there were bombs, there was Shock and Awe, and there were lifeless baby corpses littering the ground like Styrofoam.
Just like Rwanda, Palestine and laterDarfur, these bad guys seemed mighty familiar. Muslims were the new great evil; they were the new red terror; they were the new nigga. All of a sudden, racial profiling was not just okay, but it was publicly accepted. Why not? Would you get on a plane with Habib being all…Arab-y? Of course not.
The Patriot Act, signed by President George W. Bush, on Oct. 26, 2001, made sure that a lot of things were okay. Personal freedoms were shredded. We were officially under Martial law.
All across the country, Muslims and people who looked like Muslims were being attacked, harassed and even murdered. I know, as a black man, I started getting that itch of paranoia under my skin. This all felt a bit uneasy, especially with the way politicians began jumping to the front lines with rifles loaded with propaganda.
Those were dark times for our country. It was profoundly eye-opening how blatant and overt new millenium racism could be. Even during Segregation, there were still huge swaths of the nation’s citizenry that knew what was going on was wrong. But this era, post 9-11 was different.
More than a few descendents of slaves were heard to say they had no problem with the airlines’ racially profiling individuals…as long as there was reasonable suspicion of terrorist intentions. Of course, the case of Assem Bayaa proves otherwise. In that instance, on December 2001, an American citizen of Middle Eastern background, Bayaa was headed to New York but was asked to leave the plane because he was making the other passengers nervous. He did leave, but later sued the airline and settled out of court.
Sadly enough, I’m sure the passengers of that flight were a sea of white, black, brown, yellow, Puerto Rican and Haitian. We had all succumbed. Mindless terror had turned us all into monsters. Evil, it seems, was catching.
That night at my son’s side, he cried & prayed
For the one’s who died in the World Trade
His palms to God, seeds and qualms with God
He just kept on pressin’ me, wanna know why
Then one week later our bombs were dropped
We seein’ them on CNN, they just won’t stop
The infrared images of brutal attack
He said, “Daddy now we killin’ em back, right? Right? – Will Smith
You could argue that those moments were the seeds of the xenophobia that arrests us even today. In the years since 9-11, fears of terrorists have expanded to include illegal immigrants. An Arizona bill, SB 1070, signed into law on April 23, 2010, requires Mexican-Americans to have ready their documents proving citizenship if questioned by a state law enforcement officer. The obvious flaw in the law is that enforcement is based entirely on the involved officer’s perception. A person who is a Philippine-American could, under the right light, appear to be a Mexican…you know, if you’re uneducated enough.
The law has been neutered by Obama’s Justice Department in an attempt to destroy it without….destroying it. Ugh, Obama…that guy.
Back when Obama stood for things, I was proud that he was the only presidential candidate who refused to wear that silly flag pin. By 2008, the terrorist attacks were close to a decade in our rear view, yet people still had to remind folk that they were “Patriots.” It was Obama that got people thinking that maybe it’s been long enough. Maybe we should let some of these things go. If you think he hasn’t done anything during his presidency (and statistically, you do), at least give him credit for that.
Yes…things are different now. We have been raped and defiled, but at the same time, made to look at what we’d done. What was our hand in creating this atmosphere of hate? What had we done to perpetuate it after the attacks? Why did it take so long for so many of us to be bothered? This day should be remembered, not just for the thousands of souls lost, but as a moment in time when we submitted to mass hysteria and collective chaos, when we let our darkest side win.
It has been a dark time for America. Ironic that we would turn against ourselves, in the aftermath of a tragedy that left us all one color.
Staff Writer; Richard Corey
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