Reflections: Unity And Division In America, 25 Years After 9/11

Photo: National Archives Foundation

By Kiran Kaur Gill

Twenty-five years after September 11, 2001, I still remember the first tower falling. I was a senior at NYU, working out at a gym in NoHo, 20 blocks from the World Trade Center. We watched the collapse on television. When we stepped outside, we could see the towers burning downtown, black smoke filling the sky. People were walking uptown covered in soot and debris. Some were bloodied. Everyone was trying to understand what had happened.

At first, the university treated the attacks as an interruption. We were told to go to class. Then the second tower was hit. Classes were dismissed, and we were sent home. I tried calling my parents in New Jersey, but the phone lines were overwhelmed. Calls crossed into strangers’ conversations. People were desperate for information.

In the weeks following, I saw something I had never seen in New York before: American flags. They appeared in storefronts, businesses, and homes. There was suddenly an extraordinary sense of unity. Strangers helped strangers. People lined up to donate blood. The country was hurting, and Americans wanted to stand together. I felt that solidarity, too.

The symbols of faith that had always represented love, service, and devotion to me suddenly became, to some Americans, symbols of the enemy.

But as a Sikh American, I also learned how quickly solidarity could have boundaries. When I went home to New Jersey, I began hearing about Sikh Americans being harassed and threatened because of our turbans and beards. The symbols of faith that had always represented love, service, and devotion to me suddenly became, to some Americans, symbols of the enemy.

Four days after the attacks, on September 15, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh man in Arizona, was shot and killed. His killer had spoken of wanting to shoot people he associated with the attacks and mistook Balbir Singh for someone connected to terrorism. Balbir Singh was not connected to terrorism. In fact, he was planting flowers outside his gas station to honor those who had died in New York.

Years later, when I met members of the Sodhi family, I learned how proud Balbir Singh had been to be American. His story transformed how I understood September 11. The attacks were an assault on America but the violence that followed also became an assault on Americans: people who were blamed because of their religion, appearance, or perceived identity.

Our own gurdwara, which had always been a place of peace and sanctuary, suddenly had security outside. For the first time, I understood that even a house of worship could become a target.

We were Americans, too.

In the months that followed, I attended interfaith vigils and meetings with local leaders. I gave speeches and tried to explain Sikhi to people. I found myself compressing Khalsa school lessons into a few minutes: Sikhs believe in service. We believe in equality. We believe in standing up for people who are vulnerable. Mostly, I was trying to say something that should never have needed explaining: We were Americans, too.

Twenty-five years later, that is the part of September 11 I think America most needs to remember. We rightly honor the nearly 3,000 people who were killed, the first responders who ran toward danger and the survivors whose health was damaged in the years that followed. We remember the families who lost mothers, fathers, children, siblings, and friends, but remembrance should not stop at the moment the towers fell. We should also remember what happened next.

We should remember that fear can make innocent people look like enemies. We should remember that patriotism is strongest when it expands our sense of belonging rather than narrowing it. And we should remember that the people who were targeted after 9/11 were not outsiders to America. They were Americans.

That lesson matters because the impulse to divide people into “us” and “them” did not end in 2001. It is a temptation that resurfaces whenever the country is frightened.

The test of American solidarity is whether we extend it to people who are different from us and… defend their belonging when fear makes them vulnerable.

The flags I saw throughout New York after September 11 remain one of my most powerful memories of that time. They represented a country trying to tell itself that it was united. Twenty-five years later, I still believe in that ideal — however, unity cannot mean that everyone must look the same, worship the same way or share the same background. The test of American solidarity is whether we extend it to people who are different from us and whether we defend their belonging when fear makes them vulnerable.

September 11 changed my understanding of America. I saw its courage. I saw its grief. I saw its generosity. And I saw how quickly fear could turn an American into a target. Twenty-five years later, we should remember all of it.

The best tribute to those we lost is not to remember what happened to America on September 11. It is to remember what kind of America we want to be when the next moment of fear arrives.

(Gill is the Executive Director of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund).