Not everyone is accepted.

Every day, people are criticized on the color of their skin, the size of their body and the beliefs they have about the universe.

Every day, I hear students justify their mean remarks in the hallways to their friends with everything from personal to materialistic reasons.

Every day, about 86 Americans commit suicide, often because others didn’t accept them.

It’s not a lesson we should still need.

Back in Kindergarten, years ago, we were taught to make new friends and to treat people kindly. We didn’t know that most of the activities we did were actually teaching lifelong lessons.

Personally, my favorite part of the day was story time. We would all sit in a circle and Mrs. Pierson would read us a book. Every day it was different vivid journey and a lesson to be learned.

The book I clearly remember was “The Ugly Duckling.” I loved it, not because of the cute fluffy ducks, but because of the one odd duck who was harassed. Eventually the other ducklings realized he was more beautiful than the rest of them. I believe in the so-called “ugly” duckling because he showed that being different than the majority culture is okay and that we must accept others for who they are.

Twelve years later, we seem to have forgotten this simple lesson. It has been 10 years since Al Queda brought the Twin Towers to the ground and still people act as if almost every Muslim on Earth was steering those planes with the intention to kill—even Muslim Americans, who we ought to see as just as American as everyone else.

“Bullying is a nationwide problem, but many school officials and youth workers say it has become especially severe for Muslim students in the 10 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks,” Dewey Cornell, told the Washington Post.

In a study by the Washington Post, 100 percent of Muslim students said they’d been harrassed because of their faith; 80 percent said they had been called “terrorist.”

Sarah O’Neal, a freshman at Wilcox High School in Santa Clara, Calif., told the Divanne that she has received many racist comments, the worst of which was when an older boy asked, “what are you looking at, towel-head?”

Abdul Hamed, an eighth grader from Katy, Tex.,  was told by a classmate that he was a “terrorist” and “your family blows things up.”

Muslim teenagers are verbally attacked every day, but there is nothing wrong with the race they were born or the religion they follow.  Muslim Americans are ordinary Americans who just happened to share a faith with our attackers.

When Americans commit murder, we don’t sterotype all Americans as murderers. When Christians commit terrorist acts, as Timothy McVeigh did in the Oklahoma City bombings, we don’t stereotype all Christians as terrorists. So why do we sterotype Muslims?

We are taught from a young age that everyone is different, so why can’t we simply accept that?

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, we must remember the lesson of “The Ugly Duckling”: we cannot judge a person by the color of their skin, by their beliefs, or by the actions of others. If we can get past our preconceptions, we will see that that “ugly duck” is actually a beautiful swan.