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Wednesday, 07 December 2005 01:38 |
By STEPHANIE THOMAS
| Dr. Jim Pitts
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Americans have forgotten what it means to be a citizen, along with the rights that go along with that title, and have instead assumed the title of consumers, Dr. Jim Pitts, a sociology professor and vice chancellor of academic affairs at UNC Asheville, said during his presentation titled ?®Citizenship and the Global World: Has Globalization Made Citizenship Obsolete??∆ last Friday at UNCA??s Lipinsky Auditorium.
?®What is citizenship??∆ Pitts asked, while speaking to an audience of about 75 students. ?®The 14th Amendment, one of the civil rights laws past at the end of the Civil War, enabled slaves to move from being property to being a member of the U.S. community,?∆ he noted, while explaining that the language of this amendment sets the stage for individual and corporate rights, and ultimately citizenship.
?®Forty or 50 years after this was passed, there were about 370 cases that went up through the court system to a supreme court that took the 14th Amendment as the basis for its rationale,?∆ Pitts said. ?®Nineteen of the 370 were brought up by, and on behalf of, black people ?? 208 were brought up by business enterprises.?∆
He added that the amendment also ?®created the legal fiction that corporations are persons.?∆
While the 14th Amendment, along with the language in the Declaration of Independence, provided a framework for defining the word ?®citizenship,?∆ Pitts noted that people must also examine the citizen??s relationship with the government.
?®Do rights come from the government? No. As in the Declaration of Independence, you have unalienable rights given to you by God,?∆ Pitts told the audience. ?®As a citizen of America, I want my government to protect my rights. I expect that the government is going to protect us.?∆
He added that, as citizens, it is ?®important to expect?∆ that
protection, and that if Americans ?®don??t expect it, you probably won??t
get it?∆ and ?®if you don??t demand it, you probably won??t get it.?∆
?®If I depend upon how my government treats me, I??d be in a hopeless
situation,?∆ Pitts noted, referring to his own African-American heritage
and how people had to stand up and demand rights to obtain freedom and
equal citizenship.
?®If people for the last 200 years had not believed that rights were
independent of the government, that God thought we were human, then we
never would have had a civil rights movement,?∆ he noted.
Pitts added that Martin Luther King Jr. ?®didn??t look to the government?∆ for his vision ?? he ?®looked to the Biblical scripture.?∆
Furthermore, Pitts explained why citizenship may become ?®obsolete?∆ if Americans continue on their current course.
?®First of all, it??s rare that we can get people to go out and vote,?∆ he
stated, while adding that the audience, composed primarily of college
students, represent ?®an age group that is pathetic when it comes to
voting?∆ ?? and that Americans no longer seem to care.
?®?¥My vote won??t make a difference; my vote won??t be counted,???∆ Pitts
continued. ?®We want to spread democracy, and we can??t get 50 percent of
the people to vote. In a national election where you??re literally on
one side or the other, and most of us don??t vote.?∆
Pitts also posed a rhetorical question to the audience, which he
interspersed with video clips of how globalization has affected
countries such as Jamaica: ?®Have citizens been replaced by consumers??∆
?®This past Thanksgiving, families gathered around the turkey, and it
must have been right after the blessing, and a little girl looks up at
her mommy and says, ?¥Do we go out shopping now???
?®When you think about it, we often are far more in-tuned to our rights
as consumers than our rights as citizens,?∆ he continued. ?®We think of
ourselves as consumers. It??s not just that the TV tells us we are. We
talk about ourselves as consumers more than we talk about ourselves as
citizens.?∆
In addition to the views held by everyday American citizens, Pitts
noted that comments from those in government perpetuate the
consumer-oriented atmosphere.
?®Right after 9/11, the first public statement by the current president
(was), ?¥Go back to shopping,???∆ he said. ?®That was before we found out
who the bad guys were. The first thing they told us was, ?¥Don??t stay
home. Get out and keep on with the shopping.???∆
The reason for this mentality, Pitts added, is that ?®if we don??t spend,?∆ the economy will suffer.
Meanwhile, Pitts discussed another issue involving his topic of global citizenship: global government.
?®There obviously is not global government,?∆ he explained to the
audience. ?®We struggle to get agreements between governments, but there
isn??t global government.
?®We occasionally do have world agreements,?∆ Pitts continued. ?®But
that??s not the same as saying that we are citizens of the world in a
legal sense. In a spiritual sense, some of us may be there. In a sense
of concern about humanity and the globe, some of us may have that.?∆
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