can still remember it being one of the
most terrifying days of my life I
couldn’t understand how someone could
commit such an evil an indiscriminate
act of murder claiming the lives of
thousands of innocent people I can still
remember in my youth thinking that the
thick clouds of smoke that came from the
collapsing of the buildings were somehow
gonna make their way to Rochester but
little did I know what was headed my way
and toward the rest of the country
wasn’t even thicker and more dangerous
cloud of fear and in it was being
carried the debris of confusion anger
and rage people all across America were
wondering how could this happen who was
to blame and most of all what was our
country going to do I can also remember
in those days immediately following 9/11
the media’s dissemination and
cultivation of this cloud in this debris
playing the horrifying moments of that
day over and over again with no regard
for the families of the victims or our
grieving country the most poignant
memory I have in those days following
9/11 was the proliferation of the image
of Osama bin Laden and it would be this
image of the terrorist that would have a
lasting impact on not just my life and
our lives but on the lives of millions
of innocent people halfway around the
world
six years later disbelief that there was
an imminent threat to our country from
terrorists would lead me to enlisting
within the United States Marine Corps at
only 18 years old I became a Marine
Corps recruit and found myself standing
on the historic yellow footprints on so
Parris Island
south carolina i went to boot camp in
the summer of 2007 and my drill
instructors made it very clear to myself
and my platoon that their task was to
prepare us for the war in iraq and it
would be in boot camp that this
socialization of fear that i’ve been a
product of as an american growing up in
a post 9-11 world will be transformed by
an indoctrination of animus and
hostility towards the image and idea of
the terrorists while in the marine corps
i will become an avionics technician on
ch-53 deltas and echoes the platform
that has been the backbone of marine
corps aviation since the Vietnam era
this is what my unit found itself at the
forefront of aerial operations in
southern Helmand province Afghanistan
for the first time in the summer of 2009
we eventually made two combat
deployments during the duration of my
enlistment I can still remember the
Shaka though when we first landed in the
country and I saw the people who we were
supposed to be at war with walking
around our base I can remember this
creating feelings of suspicion and
distrust and thinking to myself aren’t
they supposed to be our enemy what was
even more confusing was the types of
mission my unit would conduct one day
we’d be conducting combat assault
support missions by inserting troops but
then the next day we’d be delivering
food to remote Afghan cities and
villages
I couldn’t understand if we were there
to help or hurt the Afghan people and
all the while I was constantly hearing
the terms hearts and minds and being
told that our mission in Afghanistan was
to win hearts and minds yet at the same
time I didn’t understand why people who
cost our country such great pain or 9/11
or even worth our consideration at all
I will be honorably discharged in the
spring of 2012 I didn’t know it then but
I know it now that in the name of safety
national security and worst of all
righteous indignation Islamophobia had
infiltrated my subconscious the fear
that was imparted to me on 9/11
transformed in boot camp and fully
matured in the deserts of Afghanistan
came home with me in the forms of
prejudice and implicit bias and I
carried this prejudice and implicit bias
with me everywhere I went they will
manifest on a bus on the subway at the
airport on the train anywhere I even
gave warrants of questions like why
won’t the president use terms like
radical Islam or Islamic terrorists
these experiences that I’ve shared with
you all are the origins of my story and
what led me to subscribing to the
ideologies of discrimination and other
ization towards not just the
practitioners of Islam but anyone who
even had the appearance of a Muslim then
one day while taking a class at Yale
titled inequality in America my life
would change we’d got to the subject of
Islamophobia and the media is negative
representation of both the Muslim
community and the terrorists during this
class
another student I began to engage in a
very passionate debate around the
subjects of national security and the
imminent threat of terrorism in other
words at the time I’m justifying the
media’s negative and biased
representation of our Muslim community
to someone who because of our physical
appearance depth of understanding and
most of all her empathy I perceived to
be a Muslim I don’t remember everything
she said with me word for word but as we
engaged in this dialogue I began to
follow her logic
and as I followed her logic she led me
to an aha moment I can remember thinking
to myself wow
and then posing the question in my
thoughts how is the way that I think
about the practitioners of Islam or
anyone who even has the appearance of a
Muslim any different from the media’s
criminalization of my identity the body
that I occupy wrapped within his brown
skin as a black man has been deemed boy
of innocence and value by many and has
the power to generate suspicion and
distrust within anyone subscribing to
the same prejudiced and implicit bias I
was describing – it was in that moment
that I had realized here I was the
victim of prejudice and now the
perpetuator of it that’s when it dawned
on me it wasn’t them who should be fear
but me you see prejudice and implicit
bias are culprits to which we have all
been hostage they infiltrate our hearts
and minds through the unsecured doors of
fear and the windows of ignorance and
through these very same windows of
ignorance they force us to see a person
through our worldview and not within
their greater context they come with
presumptions of guilt against the
innocent as they convince the jury of
our innermost thoughts to convict the
unknown and the stranger to biases and
stereotypes that justify our sentencing
of people to the dehumanizing status of
other and once the classification of
people is otherwise what atrocity will
the unaffected and thus disinterested
not willingly consent to astroscope for
what level of injustice will I raise my
hand and what innocence will add
then for the other humankind is on the
brink of losing the very core of who and
what we are human as the word will
become a contradiction unto itself its
application will be granted to some of
us and will be denied others history
tells us this is a reality that we’ve
experienced already for some for the
word human once when it was replaced
with words such as slave and just at the
word slave was engineered for the
purpose of its users and creators was
now also the word nigger were not white
trash bitch crippled Haji baguette spic
and tranny and to all of us who have
engaged in these psychological acts of
terror what was our goal was it not to
force someone to conform to a manner of
behavior and an identity that we could
understand whether we know it or not
when we use these terms we involuntarily
confined people within the walls of our
words when they become incapable of
seeing themselves as anything more than
what society says they are our beliefs
become their reality and it’s these
psychological operations or what we
refer to in the military as science that
convinced those who are placed into
another man’s chains that they were
slaves even when those chains were never
locked bondage is a physical condition
but enslavement is a state of mind that
convinced those of us who were told to
ascend to the heights of success they
had to shatter a glass ceiling even
though the stairway of opportunity lay
right before their eyes that convinced
those of us who were told to hide our
identities in secrecy
whether that sin
ship status sexual orientation gender
identity religion disability to live a
life comparable to that of someone
holding their breath for fear being
harmed by a toxic environment to those
on the verge of suffocation I say your
liberation begins when you take the deep
breath of truth today I make an appeal
to the conscience of this community that
though we bear on our shoulders the
weight of a complicated history a much
more enlightened future can be made
today if we can go beyond the choir of
our thoughts and the words that dictate
and influence our actions that originate
within the echo chambers of our own
minds if we can go beyond the choir of
familiar accomplices who make it easy to
keep doing what we already know doesn’t
work by affirming our underdeveloped
beliefs about people we don’t even know
if we can go beyond the choir and look
upon the stranger with empathy and
resolve within ourselves with you I make
war no more but now it is you who I make
war for this war for the heart of our
country and the soul of our human race
isn’t fought against any one person or
group of people but against a way of
thinking and ideology a social
psychology threatening to undo all the
progress we’ve made and placing us on a
path toward a dark and divisive future
the Global War on Terror isn’t just
fought in the hearts and minds of people
in far-off places but it should also be
fought in the hearts of minds of people
like you and me right here today I ask
you to join me in this effort by
declaring war on the words of terror
that have deprived many members of our
human family of their humanity if we
don’t think that
that we won’t use them and when we don’t
use them we break the cycle of
oppression and become the change my life
changed when I resolved to use empathy
over ignorance and humanize the other
I’m here today to tell you if it worked
for me it can work for you
thank you [Applause]
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