As citizens of the United States of
America, it is very easy to take for granted the many freedoms and liberties we
are lucky enough to enjoy that others around the world are not able to
experience. We are able to speak our minds when others are silenced, to pursue
our dreams while others restricted in their hopes and aspirations, and to
worship freely whereas some are persecuted for their beliefs. The fact that we
are promised these rights is contingent upon the notion that we call the United
States our home. We take for granted that we are even able to claim a
nationality to begin with, while for many around the globe, this essential
piece of one’s identity—one of the most common synonyms for homeland—is not
easily known. I had never considered how fortunate I was to be able to claim a
nationality until I began to examine more closely various concepts of human
rights in my political science classes. Learning that the United Nations stated
that “[e]veryone has a right to a nationality,” in its Universal Declaration of
Human Rights opened my eyes to the fact that there are those around the world
who are unable to identify a nationality for themselves (United Nations).
Despite this declaration, we have seen in recent years that many people around
the world are still deprived of this right. From the Palestinians to the flood
of refugees who are currently migrating into Europe, it is certainly startling
to consider, and it leads me to wonder how I would view myself if I were left
without the ability to claim a nationality, something that is so quintessential
to my identity. While it is difficult to put myself in the shoes of some of the
people that I mentioned before, as I have never experienced a feeling
comparable to that of lacking a nation to call home, my faith and my expanding
understanding of human rights has definitely made me more empathetic towards
the struggle that these people face, and has helped me to recognize the
importance of claiming a nationality to the establishment of a personal
homeland, and ultimately, its importance in defining your own identity.
This
week’s readings examine similar concepts of homeland, especially as it pertains
to feeling at home within one’s own country. In his “Letter From Birmingham
Jail,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. describes what life was like for an
African-American living during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s, and the
difficulties that they experienced when it seemed to them that they were hated
by their own country for the color of their skin. King describes that he
neither felt comfortable as an American, nor as a person of color, as he
explains that the average African-American at the time was “harried by day and
haunted by night by the fact that you are a negro, living constantly at tiptoe
stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and
outer resentments…forever fighting a degenerating sense of ‘nobodyness’” (King,
Jr. 2). The discriminatory laws and constant racism that African-Americans
experienced on a daily basis contributed to a feeling of discomfort within
one’s own skin, as well as within one’s country. Being fundamental contributors
to a person’s identity, one can understand how it would have been easy for an
African-American to slip into this sensation of “nobodyness”. Salman Rushdie
describes a similar sentiment in his piece “Imaginary Homelands”. Moving from
India to England, he admits that his “identity is at once plural and partial”
(Rushdie 15). While he has come to call both England and India his home, he at
the same time has a difficult time calling either home. Over time, he has
become distant from India, while simultaneously he is hesitant to call England
home because a piece of his heart remains in his homeland. As a result, he is
constantly torn between to distant places on the globe. These pieces underscore
the importance of being able to claim a nationality and how it contributes to
one’s own identity.
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