On September 11, 2001, I dropped my girlfriend of three years off at Bradley International Airport for a short flight to Baltimore. I was in my early twenties. I drove away thinking about work and the ordinary day ahead, unaware that within hours I would be desperately trying to find out whether someone I loved was safe.
When I returned to my office, my colleagues were gathered around a small television. We watched New York City in horror. Then came reports of more planes. The Pentagon. Pennsylvania.
I had just put someone I loved on an airplane. I did not know where she was. Eventually, I learned she was safe. Nearly 3,000 other families did not receive that news.
Twenty-five years later, America still promises to “Never Forget.” We remember the planes. We remember the towers. We remember the firefighters climbing stairs while others ran down. We remember the names of those we lost.
But I wonder whether America has remembered the tragedy while forgetting one of its greatest lessons, because something happened after September 11 that I had never witnessed before.
What Happened On September 12
On September 12, 2001, America came together.
Not perfectly. Muslim, Arab, Sikh and South Asian Americans endured hatred and suspicion that must also remain part of our national memory. But across much of the country, political labels suddenly seemed less important. Strangers helped strangers. People checked on neighbors. Americans who disagreed about almost everything found reasons to care about one another.
And as a young Black man, I felt it.
For a brief moment, some of America’s invisible walls seemed thinner. I felt welcomed into spaces where I may have previously been ostracized. I watched people of different races, religions, classes and political beliefs embrace one another.
We did not suddenly agree. We simply remembered that we belonged to one another.
Twenty-five years later, we seem to have forgotten.
When Disagreement Becomes Contempt
Gallup recently found that 80% of Americans believe the nation is greatly divided over its most important values. A CBS News poll marking the 25th anniversary of September 11 similarly found that most Americans believe we are less united today than we were after the attacks.
That should trouble all of us.
Somewhere along the way, disagreement became contempt. Political opponents became enemies. Neighbors became categories. Too often, we decide whether someone deserves our respect based upon how they vote, where they live, what they believe, whom they love or how they worship.
That is not simply political polarization. It is the erosion of our ability to see one another.
Unity Cannot Mean Silence
For Black Americans, calls for “unity” deserve particular scrutiny. Our history teaches us that unity without justice can become another word for silence.
Frederick Douglass, Fannie Lou Hamer and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did not ask America to ignore its failures to preserve peace. They demanded that America become better.
That is the unity we need now.
Not conformity. Not silence. Not pretending racism, inequality or injustice do not exist.
We need the harder kind of unity, the kind that allows us to fight passionately over ideas without surrendering one another’s humanity. Democrats do not have to become Republicans. Republicans do not have to become Democrats.
Black Americans should not have to stop talking about race. Rural Americans should not have to apologize for their values. Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists, immigrants, veterans, LGBTQ Americans and everyone in between should not have to become identical before we recognize one another as neighbors.
None of us gets America to ourselves.
Remembering Who We Were
And perhaps that is what we have forgotten about September 12, 2001.
America did not become united because we suddenly thought alike. We became united because we understood that whatever came next, we would face it together.
We should not need another national tragedy to rediscover that instinct.
An entire generation of Americans now knows September 11 only as history. They inherited the security checkpoints, photographs and stories. But they will also inherit the country we leave behind.
What will that country be? One where every disagreement becomes warfare, and every election makes half the nation fear the other half? Or one mature enough to understand that loving America sometimes means challenging America, and loving our neighbors sometimes means disagreeing with them?
What “Never Forget” Should Mean
Twenty-five years later, perhaps “Never Forget” must mean more than remembering how Americans died that day.
Perhaps it must also mean remembering how Americans chose to treat one another afterward.
We cannot recreate September 12, 2001. Nor should we romanticize it. But we can recover its greatest lesson: our differences never had to make us enemies.
We remember where we were on September 11.
Now America must remember who we were on September 12.
And we should not need another tragedy to become those people again.
