On Sept. 11, 2001, I watched and listened as all of America gathered together in the wake of the Twin Tower attacks. My mother allowed me to stay up past my curfew as she and I had our eyes and ears fixated on the television. The news reporters provided us with everything but reassurance that our lives, the lives of other New Yorkers and America as a nation would ever be the same.

On that day, people of all races, religions, creeds and cultures, banded together as one family as their hearts were consumed by the tragedy. And 10 years after, the events of Sept. 11, 2001 still hold the hearts of those in America, as well as those around the world, captive, but for a different reason.

I have worked in lower Manhattan for the past four summers, and each summer I am astounded at how many tourists flood the streets around the World Trade Center site. During my lunch breaks, I would squeeze through armies of tour groups, families waiting on line to get into the September 11th Memorial Museum, and dodge cameras aimed either at the construction site or different artwork done in commemoration of the firefighters, policemen and first responders who devoted their time, effort and lives on that day.

I would often wonder why the tourists were so mesmerized by Ground Zero and the building of the Freedom Tower. I realized that the tourists, along with everyone else who stares at the site on their way to work, see the restoration of a nation’s pride and hope, both of which we as a nation have been attempting to reclaim for the past 10 years.

Sept. 11 demonstrated how strong we can be as a nation when we band together in times of crises. It proved that despite our differences, we all share the same hopes, responsibilities and fears. Years since the attack though, it appears that the commonalities that we share as Americans have been diminished by our fears, and from those fears we have managed to attack our own beliefs, and construct new ones which contradict everything America was meant to stand for.

After Sept. 11, 2001, America stopped being the safe haven for those around the world who sought after the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. Our borders became a physical extension of the borders we placed around own lives, and the willingness we had as Americans to embrace others of different cultural backgrounds and religions was abandoned. We allowed the vulnerability we felt on Sept. 11 to turn us into xenophobes afraid of embracing or understanding the cultural differences present in our country and the people behind those cultures.

Last summer’s Park 51 controversy brought America’s Islamophobia into the spotlight, and revealed that as a nation we are still buried under our fear and misunderstanding. The fact that Islamophobia itself is now a legitimate word that can be found on http://www.Dictionary.com only proves that we have succumbed to lesser versions of ourselves, a lesser version of what people around the world expect America to be.

On the 10th anniversary of the attacks, we as a country should take the time to reflect on how far we have come and how far we have yet still to go until we are fully recovered. The Freedom Tower may be rising out of the rubble as the symbol of hope for the nation, but we the people should be our own signs of hope and pride.