
Image source: Jennjackson.com screenshot
Dr. Jenn Jackson, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, triggered an avalanche of backlash after claiming Friday the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an attack on "heteropatriarchal capitalistic systems" that "white Americans fight to protect."
Jackson's website biography reads, "Jenn M. Jackson (they/them) is a queer genderflux androgynous Black woman, an abolitionist, a lover of all Black people, and an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University in the Department of Political Science."
Jackson published a series of tweets Friday that vocalized her problems with how "white pundits and correspondents" talk about 9/11, and the impact those tragic events had on America.
"It's twenty years since 9/11 and I'm still really disturbed by how many white pundits and correspondents talk about it," Jackson began. "I'm watching [White House chief of staff on 9/11] Andy Card and [Former Homeland Security Secretary] Jeh Johnson on MSNBC. Card just said that 9/11 was the first time that Americans ever felt fear. He said that it was the last morning we woke up without fear and that the 'terrorists' succeeded in introducing us to fear."
"White Americans might not have really felt true fear before 9/11 because they never felt what it meant to be accessible, vulnerable, and on the receiving side of military violence at home. But, white Americans' experiences are not a stand-in for 'America,'" Jackson continued. "Plenty of us Americans know what it's like to experience fear and we knew before 9/11. For a lot of us, we know fear *because* of other Americans."
"We have to be more honest about what 9/11 was and what it wasn't. It was an attack on the heteropatriarchal capitalistic systems that America relies upon to wrangle other countries into passivity. It was an attack on the systems many white Americans fight to protect," Jackson added.
Syracuse University assistant professor of political sciencepic.twitter.com/gXw6AZFNDO— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield Rando) 1631365211
"We have to be clear that the same motivations that animated America's hypervigilance and responsiveness to 'terror' after 9/11 are now motivating the carceral state and anti-immigration policy," Jackson said.
Jackson's remarks generated a mountain of criticism and mockery, which pointed out that Islamic fundamentalists are certainly not motivated by femenist or pro-LGBT ideology.
After Jackson's tweets began generating attention online, she "locked" her Twitter account, which means that people who were not following her before cannot see her tweets now.
However, Jackson's tweets were archived, which you can see here.