Arab-American students absorbed blame for the attacks while elders rejected it

Evidence

When the boys walked into the store, Akram looked to his uncle and said in Arabic, “We did it.” His uncle cursed America and its foreign policy and said that they didn’t do anything. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 503

Categorization

• BMF: The boy claiming ‘We did it’ as inherited guilt jolts against the adults’ firm rejection—evokes Changez’s self-positioning in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, where the narrator partially claims responsibility for America’s blind spots while being blamed for them.