9/11 Has Changed America's Sense of Self, Says UB Professor of American Culture

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The Sept. 11 terrorists attacks have dramatically changed attitudes Americans have about themselves, their country and war, says Bruce Jackson, Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture in the Department of English at the University at Buffalo.

Nearly one year after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, there still is a palpable fear among Americans that is "small and fleeting at times, large and overwhelming at other times," says Jackson, also a SUNY Distinguished Professor.

"When there's a change in the sound of an airplane's engines, everyone you see stops moving or looks to the sky," he notes. "A sudden bump in flight produces far more concern than it did a year ago. People wonder: 'What are the flight attendants doing? Are they really that calm or are they faking it?'"

Prior to the terrorist attacks, Jackson says most Americans saw war as "a board game reported by CNN with streaming reports of the stock market at the bottom of the screen." Vivid broadcast images of the attacks and the bold manner in which the attacks were perpetrated in their homeland have made many Americans much less blase about war, Jackson says.

"9/11 was unambiguously an attack on America and Americans in every conceivable aspect," Jackson adds. "The almost absurd devices the killers used -- box cutters, primarily -- to turn our own domestic aircraft into terrifying weapons changed the way we think about warfare, where it happens, who does it and what it looks like."

The American flags that were so plentiful and prominent in U.S. cities the weeks immediately after the attacks are less plentiful now, Jackson points out. Many Americans no longer need to be comforted by the patriotic symbolism, he says, but they still are wary about the future.

"For a while after 9/11 we were paranoid about everyone and the landscape was aflutter with flags, flags and more flags, as if we had to announce to ourselves that we were really still here," Jackson says. "Most of the flags are gone. We're still here. And we are less naive than we were before."

If there is one positive aspect to the terrorism, Jackson says, it's that many Americans have opened their eyes and minds to the world beyond their borders.

"Many Americans now are far more likely to see themselves and their country as part of the world, rather than a special place where one is free to ignore everyone else's needs and aspirations and conditions," he says. "We are far less likely to think of the world as simply us and everyone else. Those others have been given faces and names."