Abstract
This chapter is an overview of the concept of the “citizen” as it came to be understood in Western Enlightenment thought and its application to the conditions of African-descended peoples in the United States. Positioning the conditions of African-American citizenship as a defining category of American democracy, its realization or lack thereof signifies the civic integrity of the state. The chapter presents social nullification as the failure of the state to apply citizenship to African-American constituents and the African-American response to these failings and as the central theme of the book.
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Notes
- 1.
Webster’s New World Dictionary, 2nd College Edition. William Collins Publisher: Cleveland, OH, 1980, pg. 260.
- 2.
In this sense civil disobedience is the most demonstrative example of what citizenship is.
- 3.
See Blaut, James. The Colonizer’s Model of the World. Guilford Press: New York, 1993.
- 4.
Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Freedom/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument,” CR: The New Centennial Review, Vol. 3, No. 3, (Fall 2003), pg. 266.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Rediker, Marcus. The Slaveship: A Human History. New York: Penguin Books, 2008.
- 7.
“Sylvia Wynter: What Does it Mean to Be Human?” Sylvia Wynter: The Human Being as Praxis, Katherine McKittrick, ed. Duke University Press: Durham, NC, 2016, pp. 106–123.
- 8.
Mignolo provides as an example of “pluralversity”: Iranian Philosopher Ali Shari’Ati’s Koranic-based distinction between Bashar (Being) and Ensan (Becoming). I quote at length, “the difference between Ensan, Bashar and all the other natural phenomena such as animals, tress, etc., is that all are ‘beings’ except Ensan who is becoming. … But man in the sense of the exalting truth, towards whom we must constantly strive and struggle in becoming, consists of divine characteristics that we must work for as our ideal characteristics.” “Sylvia Wynter: What Does It Mean to Be Human?” pg. 119. To further illustrate the point Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu writes that for some African societies personhood (humanity) is based on ethical behavior; he writes, “Personhood is something which has to be achieved, and is not given simply because one is born of human seed.” “An Oral Philosophy of Personhood: Comments on Philosophy and Orality,” Research in African Literatures, Vol. 40, No. 1, Oral Literature and Identity Formation in Africa and the Diaspora (Spring, 2009) pp. 8–18, (16).
- 9.
“Universal Dimensions of Black Struggle II: Human Rights, Civil Rights,” African Philosophy: An Anthology. Edited by Emmanuel Eze. Blackwell Publishers Ltd.: Oxford UK 1998, pg. 110.
- 10.
See Elsa Barkley Brown’s, “To Catch a Vision of Freedom,” Unequal Sisters: An Inclusive Reader in U.S. Women’s History. Edited by Vicki L Ruiz and Ellen Carol DuBois. (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 124–46.
- 11.
Manning Marable, ed. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers: Lanham, MD 2009.
- 12.
The Racial Contract. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.
- 13.
“Racially Based Jury Nullification: Black Power in the Criminal Justice System,” The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 105, No. 3 (Dec., 1995), pp. 677–725.
- 14.
64 Emory Law Journal 1 (2014) Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper No. 13–15.
- 15.
Ibid., pg. 1.
- 16.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail. London: Penguin Books, 2018.
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Peterson, C.F. (2021). Citizenship and Its Discontents: Introduction to Beyond Civil Disobedience—Social Nullification and Black Citizenship. In: Beyond Civil Disobedience. African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77554-4_1
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