The audience ranged from families to San Diego State University students to other members of the San Diego community. Most of the discussion centered on memories of the days following 9/11. For one young college student, the film surprised her: she remembered the attacks, but did not realize how quickly people picked out targets. Her feelings at the time were of fear and confusion, of not knowing and not immediately thinking of who to blame. That others immediately started targeting anyone they thought looked Muslim shocked her.
Others were aware of how quickly the racist backlash had begun. A Sikh-American college student recalled that he had been in high school at the time. Before 9/11, the students in one of his classes had shared their backgrounds, and he had told them about being born in India and his Sikh faith. He felt he had educated them, yet when the towers fell, he was targeted by anti-Muslim slurs.
A Sikh teen shared how a group of boys had harassed him as he started high school, but the vice principal had shown them this film and the situation became better. He wondered, however, what more he could do: his school has over 3,000 people, and the thought of educating all of them seems like an overwhelming task.
Another viewer remembered being in graduate school at the time; sitting in his international relations class (a subject that seemed less abstract that the day before). His best friend, who was Indian, turned to him, saying how different it would be, that now he wouldn’t be able to go out alone. Since then, this viewer had married a non-white woman, and this combined with the experience of his friend's after 9/11 changed how he viewed his life: he realized that like his friend and many of the other people who had shared their stories, his children might face prejudices that he never had to experience.
A Japanese-American woman also discussed her worries about her children: avoiding racial discrimination had been one of the reasons she had moved her family from the East Coast to a more tolerant area. She also shared her feelings that we are, in many ways, living in a reenactment of the Internment and discussed her efforts to get her community to stand up for the new groups being targeted.
Not every story was one of having experienced or fearing the continuation of racial hatred. The mother of the young man whose antagonizers had reformed after seeing this film shared a story of hope to counter everyone’s less-pleasant memories. After 9/11, she feared for her children’s safety, but instead of hatred, she saw people come together: her neighbors made a point to come to her and tell her that they would help watch over her children and her home.
Some viewers left as soon as the film ended; not all wanted to share a story; but everyone listened. That is what this film does. You listen to the stories of those in the film and it makes you more open to the story of the stranger sitting next to you.
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