Racial justice requires that we reimagine citizenship
The growing movement for racial justice demands that we reimagine our flawed systems. Yet, at a time when every part of our current system seems to be showing new faults and fractures each day, perhaps there is something else that needs to be conceived anew. What might emerge if we reimagined citizenship itself?
During the 18th century, revolutionaries imagined that citizens should be guaranteed defined rights and liberties. But their “citizenship” excluded all but white men and advantaged those with economic privilege.
Full citizenship then was not for people who didn’t own land, nor for Native Americans, Black Americans or women. And while we have made much progress since these founding principles of citizenship were codified, it has been too slow and too limited.
Our country is worse off because we have been too timid in addressing deeply entrenched disparities. We know that more and more working people can’t afford the basics of a secure life. The brilliance and inventiveness of millions of people are lost to our society when they have little chance to get educated or contribute their skills and talents.
We all lose when experience makes mistrust and fear the emblem of interactions between law enforcement and people who are Black or Latinx, and when those who define liberty as the right not to wear a preventive mask assault those we ask to enforce the requirement.
Claudia Rankine, in her brilliant book “Citizen,” puts it this way: “Nobody notices, only you’ve known, you’re not sick, not crazy, not angry, not sad — It’s just this, you’re injured.”
From rising death rates due to suicide to high rates of chronic health conditions such as addiction and obesity, and from resistance to communal responsibility for public health, to a dysfunctional, divided government unable to find common purpose or do its basic job — we are coming apart at the seams.
The problem below the surface is the corrosive impact of our failure to include everyone in full citizenship. It is eating away at our country’s heart and soul. So perhaps in this mostbracing moment, we should look not only at structures but at ourselves. Perhaps we will only truly revive our country’s spirit by renewing our citizenship and the liberties, rights, duties and responsibilities that define it.
Perhaps what we are really called to do in this moment is to reimagine citizenship to actually include all of us, for if we were all included, we would do what it takes individually to advance our liberty jointly by creating a community where all of its members feel powerful and secure.
Perhaps with our renewed citizenship we would seize our rights by behaving as though we are each entitled to dignity and equitable treatment by our neighbors, our community, our government. Perhaps we would embrace our duty by undertaking service to others.
It is time for us to take responsibility and drive change. We must have more courage to speak up and more humility to listen.
After all, systems are a conglomeration of people. If we behave differently, if enough of us envision something different that is better for the whole, we can create it.
The economist Robert Frank suggests that one must “spend more on society” in order to “get more for yourself.” What if we extend that “spending” to all of our investments — our time, treasure and talent. Conceive of that as our role as citizens, and we can find a way forward.
Carla Javits is president and CEO of the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund, a venture philanthropy that invests exclusively in social enterprises that employ and empower people overcoming barriers to work.
“The problem below the surface is the corrosive impact of our failure to include everyone in full citizenship. It is eating away at our country’s heart and soul.”