Can Someone Please Murder Intolerance & Ignorance?

Can Someone Please Murder Intolerance & Ignorance?

I had a severe case of writers block last weekend. On the nine year anniversary of 9/11, I once again fell into that place of depression one falls into when trying to process loss…

September 11th, 2001 is as painful a day to revisit in my mind, even all these years later, as it was to actually experience the agonizing shock of the morning itself.

For some reason the media always mentions how beautiful the weather was on that fateful day – as if terrible disasters should only happen in the midst of thunderous storms that set the scene for certain despair.

Me personally, I never would’ve realized what nature had to offer us in the way of the climate that morning, for I was already in mourning myself, early on a day, which at its close would come to alter Americas sense of security indefinitely…

My head was already hung low to the ground, my dark suit was neatly pressed and all of my thoughts revolved around heading off to a funeral for the mother of my good friend, Melvin Freeman, who had regrettably passed away several days prior.

It was only a few days earlier that I was immersed in deep conversation with Mel about the intricate topic of life and death. My conversation with him at his mothers wake was one of assurance that even in this tragedy… that even after losing the rock and the foundation of his very existence, that the only way to make his mother proud would be to live a fruitful life himself, a meaningful life… a life of purpose.

I was basically asking him not to give up on life…

Can you imagine the tens of thousands of conversations like this that took place in the days after 9-/11?

Can you imagine how many difficult memories still plague those who lost loved ones so many years ago, seemingly as if it were only just yesterday?

In my eyes… the worst part about loss, is the loss of the dreams that one realizes will never come to fruition with the person no longer her to live out those imaginings.

On the morning of 9/11, I don’t believe I could’ve been sitting in a safer environment as the towers were burning, preparing to collapse, because I was sitting in a church in Norfolk, Virginia...

And although it was a funeral… it was far from solemn.

Even being in my 30’s, I was just being exposed to new experiences, new cultures and religions.

And here I was learning that an African American funeral is a celebration of life, complete with angelic singing from the choir, dancing in the isles and praying out in joy that this life was somehow a blessing to all who knew Mrs. Freeman.

They truly do celebrate life…

It was a far cry from the incense smoke and dark hymns of the many Catholic funerals I’d become accustomed to in the early years of my life…

I lost a lot of water weight that morning, tasting my own salted tears flowing down my face, as if my face were a leaky faucet that simply couldn’t be plugged…

I was crying out in heartbreak for my good friend’s mother… crying out for all those I’d lost along my own journey through life and crying out in pain due to the atrocities taking place in my native New York on that historically tragic day… while I was sitting in a comatose state in God’s house.

And I never really stopped crying… Even as the years on the calendar continued to change, the pain of that day never really leaves ones soul… Does it?

Several months after 9/11, in November I flew to Seattle on business. As with many of my past career-related travels, I was alone, yet wanting to experience my surroundings… places I never could’ve imagined visiting when I was a corner kid back in the Bronx… So I headed out…

On this night, I was on the observation deck of the Seattle Space Needle enjoying the breathtaking scenery of a lovely city lit up illuminating its own magical beauty.

And while there was no comparison to the beauty of New York City from the observation deck of the World Trade Center, it gave me peace to be sixty stories up enjoying a beautiful night sky…

Until that sense of peace was shattered by my own intolerance…

I turned to observe six Muslim men, dressed in full traditional garb speaking in a native tongue I had no hopes of deciphering…

My deepest levels of ignorance and intolerance reared themselves to me that night, as I began to wonder if these men were there plotting to blow up the Space Needle… or even worse, preparing to blow it up at that very moment…

As I looked down from sixty stories above the earth, I immediately caught flashbacks of New Yorkers leaping to their own deaths on 9/11… I shook my head and grew disturbingly angry at the events of that day… I wanted to fight… But I didn’t even know who my enemy was. I caught myself staring at these men as if they were the terrorists… though they were most likely just tourists themselves wanting to experience Seattle as I did…

I locked eyes with one of the men, who quickly turned away. I suppose they didn’t want to be in the habit of inviting confrontation around that very sensitive time.

I can only imagine the racism and hatred they must’ve felt, and still feel to this day when Americans get angry and want to lash out at someone who looks like a terrorist.

Makes me think back to a time when the KKK would grab any Negro boy off the street and hang him on a tree simply for being the same skin color as someone they perceived as the enemy.

Reminds me of the Arizonians sitting on the border waiting to shoot any wetback they see coming across “their” line, into “their country…”

And it definitely looks like the type of racism that is drummed up when intolerance and ignorance are mixed with anger causing a disastrous outcome, such as the stabbing of a Muslim cab driver, Ahmed H. Sharif, by a 21-year-old film student, Michael Enright just a few weeks back.

It took time for me to learn tolerance… and I believe I’m a better man today as my focus is always on over-standing… which means choosing to understand on a higher level of thinking…

Recently, I’ve tried to understand all of the controversy surrounding the mosque being built at Ground Zero and in the end it still merely equates to nothing more than intolerance.

The intolerance, not of a religion that when taken out of context can lead to radicals killing innocents… But the intolerance of “all” who practice that religion and everything they stand for…

Intolerance, coupled with the ignorance to not be understanding of the fact that radical ideologies have existed in every religion since the immersion of mankind and still exist to this day…

One need only look at radical Christians slaughtering abortion doctors, killing innocents while trying to protect innocence… Does that make sense to anyone?

When I think of 9/11, I don’t focus on the pain of the day as much as the stories of those innocents who lost their lives early on that beautiful morning simply because of intolerance and ignorance.

I think instead about people like New York City Firefighter Peter Bielfeld, who was out on medical leave the morning disaster struck. His fate dictated that his medical appointment that morning be located across the street from the World Trade Center…

His fate dictated that even though he wasn’t released to go back to work after being wounded in a Bronx fire, that he was still a firefighter… still a hero… still a man who cared about all of humanity…

His fate dictated that he was a family man who would write a farewell note to his family before heading into the already burning towers…

He said goodbye in a note and he never came home again…

I truly wonder how he’d feel about all of the ignorance and intolerance taking so much of the Medias attention away from the real stories of that day…

The stories of women and men like Peter Bielfeld who ran into those towers to save lives, no matter what color, creed or religion cried for help from inside…

The story about the morning intolerance got the best of humanity… But humanity still survived!



Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone – Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Sanchez is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering and is currently working on several new books about NY Latinos. He is also the co-host of Rebel Radio on Urban Latino Radio.