Global Citizenship: Privilege or Precondition
The question of whether one should identify as a global citizen or a national citizen is very interesting. When considering societal expectations, it may be easy to say that an individual should identify as one or the other; however, this question fails to recognize if one has the privilege to choose said identity. After spending a considerable amount of time contemplating this question, I arrived at this statement: “Sure, it is possible to look at the news and acknowledge what is happening overseas, but the ability to think globally is a privilege granted to those who can put aside the issues they face nationally.”
I was wrong.
I hope to explain to you the harmful and dangerous consequences of this mindset as well as offer the notion that while it may feel impossible for those who are struggling in their current position to identify as a global citizen, this identification generates relationships between those who may be struggling with similar issues in completely different corners of the world. This dialog is meaningful because it is the one of the strongest ways to fight injustices here at home.
For all my life, I have lived in Brooklyn, New York. Growing up as a black kid, I have had a multitude of different experiences — experiences that I can assure you are very different from those of my white counterparts. I grew up on the music of Nas and Jay-Z, and at the heart of it all, I was always taught to “spread love, that’s the Brooklyn way” — The Notorious B.I.G.
Brooklyn was my home, and home was where I felt the most comfortable. Growing up in that environment, it becomes so difficult not to see your city as the center of the universe. If there was an issue in the city, everyone would divert their attention to that problem and do everything in their power to rectify it. If you had asked me between the ages of 10–15 if I knew about any of the issues circling the Middle East or Central America, I wouldn’t be able to give you even the most basic level of knowledge on the topics. This lack of knowledge was not because I did not have the ability to retain the information; it was because this information had never been taught to me with enough conviction for me to remember with accuracy. There is something that comes with growing up in a place like New York City that makes anything that does not directly correlate with the city irrelevant.
Consider the protests against Police brutality. Whether you support or denounce these protests, this movement was one of the most defining social calls to action in the 2010s throughout the United States. Here in Brooklyn, it is not rare to get handed a flyer advertising a rally aimed at spreading awareness about police brutality and calling out the law enforcement officers that have murdered our brothers and sisters. As we all know, these protests were not only practiced in New York, but all over the country in almost every major city you can think of. Millions of people were moved enough to leave the comfort of their homes to march, fight, and demonstrate against institutionalized racism within the police force.
While I support all of the efforts from us as Americans to fight this issue, I wonder how many out of the millions here in America knew about this same exact struggle that was also happening in South Africa. Over the past decade, there have been countless instances of police brutality in South Africa, a country that only 30 years ago was in one of the most violent racial disputes of modern history. Still today, it is estimated that at least one South African is killed in a police shooting everyday. In South Africa, protests seem to cover more ground than protests in America as their main goal is to stop black on black crime rather than white on black crime. While there are numerous unjust shootings by white police officers in South Africa the majority of the population and police force is black. This distinction brings social class and poverty into these protests unlike protests in America.
Perhaps an even deeper question than the one posed above is, what could we have done with this information. Maybe protestors from both countries would have banded together and created a global alliance with the purpose of stopping police brutality on a global level. Maybe we as Americans would have adopted a mindset that focused on social class rather than only race. In my opinion, this truly gives insight into the idea of global citizenship because it detaches its identification from it being a privilege. Just because we have issues that need to be faced in our own country does not mean that we can not use knowledge learned globally to better equip us for said issues.
A fascinating example of this interconnection between global and local issues was the occupy wall street movement. For several months thousands of white-collar workers occupied financial areas around the country in protest. While this demonstration was very much rooted in America, the original idea for this kind of protest came from Egyptian protests against police brutality. Suppose the founding members of the #OCCUPY movement had never heard of this Egyptian protest. In that case, it is possible that we would have never done this demonstration that forced the top 1% to recognize the wealth disparity that exists in our culture.
With that said, I believe with all of my heart that it is up to the community as a whole to recognize issues on a global scale rather than the individual. If we think back to me as a young kid in Brooklyn, my global ignorance was not because I did not have the means to learn or because there were too many issues that I had to face in my city. This ignorance was because the broader community mindset was so focused on what was happening here at home. If I had lived in an environment where it was normal to do research on a global level, it is very possible that I would have identified as a global citizen.
Given the knowledge that I have now, I believe that only living in a national mindset is one of the most detrimental things you can do because only focusing your attention on local issues completely cuts off the ability to share and borrow ideas for justice on a global level. Just because you see your own national issues does not mean that you can’t see global ones as well. Imagine all of the progress that we can make nationally when we open ourselves to thinking globally.
So yes, the question of whether one should identify as a global citizen or a national citizen does not take into account one’s ability to make that decision. However, I believe that the answer to this question becomes unequivocal once you recognize the positive impact that a community-based global mindset can have on the world. Once we realize the benefits of being a global citizen, the question now becomes how can we change our communities to exist in a more global frame of mind, and how will you help make that change.
