Pride

“Something else besides the increase in sympathetic representations of Arab and Muslim Americans in the U.S. media after 9/11 puzzled me: certain friends and colleagues expressed pride and relief. They claimed that Americans were at the dawn of a new era. They stated that racism against Arabs and Muslims after 9/11 was “not so bad” because we were not rounded up and placed in internment camps, as was done with Japanese Americans during World War II.”

First of all, the above statement is false, as Americans found their scapegoat in Muslims, Arabs and anyone who looked like the terrorists responsible for hijacking four U.S. airliners and killing nearly 3,000 people after flying them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Hate crimes against those associated with Islam jumped 1600 percent, an FBI report in 2002 found. Today, Islam phobic hate crimes remain five times more common than they were before 9/11. It is clear that the people who made the above comments are not speaking factually. With that being said, the one word that stood out to me was pride, due to the fact that it could have multiple meanings in this context.

Pride: “A feeling or deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one’s own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired.”

That definition of pride, one of satisfaction fits the above quote. However, what about the definition of pride where all odds and obstacles are against you and it is up to you to not let those odds break you and make you into something or someone you are not. I believe this definition of pride fits how innocent Muslims felt after Americans pinned the blame for the attacks on all of them as a whole, even if they had absolutely nothing to do with what happened.