Blog Post #1
When I hear the word citizen the thought that comes into my head is proof. Since I myself am an immigrant to The United States my view of citizenship is much more literal in the sense, since it is the process my family and I had to go through to be able to move to the states. Words like, green card, passport, permanent resident, social security number, and sponsor all have a hand in formulating the concept of being a citizen in my head. But besides these in my heart I feel a citizen needs to be someone that is an asset to society, someone who works hard and makes the community a better place for all people. They should be someone who can offer you help when you need it and same you can offer them when they are in need of assistance. In the Literal and legal sense you first need to apply for a green card which is your permanent resident identification/visa that the government provides you with so you can live in said country until you officially become a citizen the wait time for this can be anywhere from a few years to more than a decade for my family it was 9 years. You then have to apply using a US citizen application form which is usually 5 years after having a green card. Once your application is accepted and you get your certificate you can apply for your passport. These associations usually line up with people who have some money and are not in a state of panic to leave their original country since they need time for all of the paperwork to get processed. The reason why the concept of being a citizen is so important for the sake of this book is because the author is trying to say that these people who have faced injustice living in this country have ticked all the boxes of being a citizen, so why are they not treated like one? The only way we can fix this issue is to solve the problem of racism which has been an ailment to this country since its creation. This is not an easy task. But it is something that must be done gradually. It will take a long time however.
On page 131 in the Citizen Rankine discusses the story of the man sitting on the train with an empty seat next to him. Yet knowone on the train who is standing seems to want to take it. From the text we can almost perfectly infer that the man is black and the woman standing is white. The woman probably didn't sit down next to the man because she thought he might try to touch her or steal something from her. It is crazy to think that someone would jump to these conclusions just based on skin colour but a lot people do this sometimes even without knowing it. For me the quote “The man doesn’t acknowledge you as you sit down because the man knows more about the unoccupied seat than you do. For him, you imagine, it is more like breath than wonder. “(Rankine 131) says it all. It sums up that even the man understood why she wouldn't sit down. But because he experienced this type of thing in the past he didn't even think anything of it. Reading this has made me think of all the times that I had an empty seat next to me and nobody sat in it . Was it because I looked a little scary to them? Was it because I was speaking a foreign language to them and they felt unsafe? This reading has definitely made me more conscious of paying attention to people's body language near me in the future.
