Hello there ASTU Friends,
With less than a month left, we will soon be done our first year at UBC! It’s not time to celebrate yet unfortunately because the next couple weeks are going to filled with a great deal of papers and other daunting tasks, but we can endure!
This past week we participated in our second ever joint interdisciplinary lecture in our CAP Global Citizens Stream, just another perk of being a CAP student! We focused on a rather interesting and prevalent movement, #BlackLivesMatter which took storm after the 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin whereby justice wasn’t delivered to the victim and he was in fact de-humanized during trial.
It was enlightening to analyze the movement of #BlackLivesMatter through the multiple disciplines we’ve studied in CAP: Sociology, Political Science, Geography, and last but not least Literature Theory. As interesting as it was contrasting the different ways scholars of the various disciplines understand the issues, what I was more interested in was analyzing the #BlackLivesMatter movement as a Global Citizen.
When I think of a Global Citizen I think of a person who cares about the struggles of everyone and does more than social media ‘slacktivism’ in raising awareness for issues. Most importantly, I envision a Global Citizen as someone who doesn’t regard a human for there national identity or ethnicity, but rather as an equal and fellow human; after all, doesn’t a Global Citizen advocate for unified humanity?
Initially, I took an optimistic view that such a movement brought people of all colours together to rally for the movement characterizing such individuals as Global Citizens. However, although people are coming together, doesn’t it take away the individualized struggle and trauma felt by many black citizens? This is where being a Global Citizen becomes a problem – at least with my understanding of a Global Citizen.
It seems to me that a Global Citizen would advocate for #AllLivesMatter versus #BlackLivesMatter. Although I’ve changed my views since, I used to be confused by movements like #BlackLivesMatter or even #PrayForParis during the aftermath of the horrific Paris Attacks last year. As a self-aclaimed Global Citizen, I used to think that #AllLivesMatter and that we should #PrayForHumanity but after taking ASTU 100 and reading literature conveying trauma, I am beginning to realize how problematic such a view is.
Perhaps its time to re-evaluate what it truly means to be a Global Citizen? Because certainly #BlackLivesMatter and no one should be able to take away the collective and individual trauma from that movement…
Best Regards,
Kaveel
P.S This is my last blog post for ASTU as I am class blogger next week! I’ll miss writing for my peers 🙁
