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jflicker · 7 years

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“American Citizenship is a Privilege, Not a Right”

It’s 4:30 here. I’m writing a paper, I haven’t actually slept. I just ate a cake and had three shots. This isn’t a good idea. At all.

But Imma gonna get on a soap box, cause this other person was saying I shouldn’t use some funny post as a platform, though I was more musing than anything else. So now Imma going to have a platform so fuck you very much.

The whole “american citizenship is a privilege, not a right” thing has always sat wrong with me. One of those things that, you’re not quite sure why, but it just doesn’t. Like when I was little (and by that I mean up until sophomore year of college) and my dad lectured that I needed more common sense. That I had all these crazy ideas that just weren’t right. I told him it was common sense. He said it wasn’t because it wasn’t like everyone else’s. “Common sense” is called so because it is common. Just like logic is logic and that’s why it’s called logic. There is only one standard, and my set apparently isn’t it. At least, as I get older, I can voice WHY this shit is so weird to me.

First of all. here’s the thing, I don’t feel comfortable saying American citizenship is a privilege. It squicks me very badly. And having lived in the Midwest and the West Coast, more than visited the East Coast and the South, I’ve heard people say it. A lot of people are able to say it and I notice something about the people who tend to say “it’s a privilege”. And I’m not white-shaming here, but MOST people who say citizenship is a privilege tend to be some kind of Caucasian. Not all Caucasians mind. I’ve noticed that more than a few Irish acquaintances are also a bit uncomfortable with it. And others just disagree. It’s just that those who DO say it tend to be white...and are the ones who are the least likely to get this “privilege” taken away.

Lately, we’ve seen a lot of this. This Iranian man and his family fed important information to the US government, risked their lives, abandoned their home, and can’t exactly go back. They were promised citizenship but were turned away (thank you Trump administration). Plenty of people said, “sad story, but that’s how it is, citizenship is a privilege”. Doesn’t matter that you have maybe a few hundreds dumb bumfucks saying this who work at a beer factory, not really contributing anything, and nobody would notice if they disappeared. Just another sad story about how “too bad they don’t get the privilege”. Even people born in the US themselves are targeted. Maybe because their parents came to the US specifically to give birth to them here. Maybe because they’re wearing a hijab and they have family members unable to get back into the US after a business trip.

Thirdly, do you know how many people who spout out about “citizenship is a privilege, not a right, they have to earn their citizenship” can’t pass the immigration test? That the only reason they have their own citizenship is because of rights (14th Amendment) laid out by this country?

Fourth: frankly? Here’s the brutal truth. At this point, American citizenship is still a privilege. If you are in a minority? No matter how hard one works, how much they contribute, how agreeable they are or assimilated they’ve become, you are going to have to continue proving your worth as an something worth keeping around for the rest of your life. And even then, it’s not enough. When it comes down to it, all we need is another Executive 9066 signed by Trump (who has an administration that stated that the idea and concept of internment camps had precedence) for an entire people to be stripped of their civil rights. And it wasn’t like it was just the Japanese, there were plenty of German-Americans who got put in detention camps too.

Oh, they may be sorry now. They may have apologized and made reparations. But its 2017, and Congress still hasn’t gotten around to giving reparations to all the families put into camps. It doesn’t change property confiscated and things lost when the US government decided that the best coarse of action was to put the “dangerous element” into camps in order to protect the country. Systemically, the Jewish people definitely had it worse (and I encourage people to visit the Holocaust Museum, that is an important experience), but that the US and German government used was the same. And it’s very easy to go there again, “...needs to protect America first and if that means having people not protected under our constitution [register]”. (Quote by Trump Spox in support of the Muslim registry, where registry would include Muslim Americans and people are left wondering who are the “American people” they’re seeking to protect.)

So go on about how American citizenship is a privilege. Cause you’re right. It is a privilege. And remember that privileges can be taken away. You may feel safe, say it because in your whole life, you’ve never had to fear it as even the most remote of possibilities. But it’s there. You have say it’s a privilege, but you’ve never believed about it when it’s talking about you. Your own citizenship may be a right, and you’ve probably never consciously thought about it otherwise. But it’s not. Same thing with guns. Same thing with free speech. It can be taken away with a signature just as easily as everything else, you can be stripped of your right to own property, free speech, and fair trial. Have no illusions, it’s just as much a privilege for you as it is for everyone else. The fact that you feel safe and secure enough to talk about how citizenship and everything that come with it is a “privilege, not a right” is it’s own kind a privilege. I hope you appreciate that.

#4AM rant #I'm going to sleep #rights #privileges #american citizenship

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