People Share Other Tragedies the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks Inspired With #AfterSeptember11 Posts

The September 11 terrorist attacks forever changed the United States. Every year on the anniversary, we remember the heartbreaking losses of the nearly 3,000 people who perished in the attacks, but people on Twitter have begun sharing posts under the #AfterSeptember11 hashtag to discuss other tragedies that the attacks inspired—ones that don't get spoken about enough.

The posts shared under the hashtag are mainly by Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans who say they or those close to them faced different forms of violence, harassment and bullying after the attacks, due to increased Islamophobia.

One of the tweets that has been shared the most is by a person with their name listed as "StanceGrounded." In the tweet, he shared screenshots of four tweets, at least three of which are from 2015, with people writing about traumatic experiences they had after 9/11. He called for further discussion of incidents like those described in the tweets. "Let's normalized [sic] talking about these tragedies too," he wrote.

The four tweets he shared were mostly written by people explaining assaults that happened to their parents after the attacks. "[I] grew up without a mom, because someone with a gun decided that she needed to answer for it with her life," one reads.

"[M]y grandfather was beaten up on his way to the mosque. They didn't know he'd just lost a daughter on 9/11," another person wrote.

"[O]n Sep 13, my dad stopped wearing a turban, cut his hair, & shaved his beard [because] he was assaulted at work by a white man," one of the other tweets says.

StanceGrounded's tweet has been retweeted over 20,000 times and liked over 35,000 times.

Other people shared their own experiences using the hashtag or quote tweeting StanceGrounded. One woman wrote about her family considering a name change after receiving calls from people that would call her father "Mr. Al-Qaeda" and a teacher that would target her brother who was in second grade, constantly marking him incorrectly.

Many Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans shared stories about people accusing them of being terrorists simply for being Arabic. Other people wrote about other forms of discrimination and harassment they experienced following the attacks.

Some Twitter users who aren't Muslim or Arab shared forms of discrimination that they faced for being brown. One person tweeted about his family being stopped for speaking in Spanish at an airport following 9/11.

This wasn't the first time that StanceGrounded has shared tweets about experiences after 9/11. He tweeted many of the same tweets on September 12, 2019. In the thread, he shared three different experiences he and members of his family had after the attacks. "Most of the kids in school called me a terrorist & asked me if Bin laden was my uncle. Physically and verbally abused. Not having any friends made it alot [sic] harder," he wrote.

The other stories he shared were about hearing people whisper disparaging remarks about his mother while at a supermarket, and parents of one of the children that his sister taught pulling their child from the school where she works, because "they do not feel safe that their child is there."

Newsweek attempted to contact StanceGrounded via Twitter but did not receive a response in time for publication.