In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Teaching in the Time of “Trumpism”: Reflections on Citizenship and Hospitality
  • Cécile Accilien (bio)

Perhaps the most insidious and least understood form of segregation is that of the word. (122)

This endless struggle to achieve and reveal and confirm a human identity, human authority, contains, for all its horror, something very beautiful. (128)

Baldwin says skin color cannot be more important than the human being. (94)

Every day I think about where I came from and I am still proud of who I am. (122)

–Claudia Rankine (2014)

I am teaching a first-year seminar course on gender and identity in Africa and the Caribbean. Our class is reading the University of Kansas common book titled Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine (2014). It is a timely book that deeply resonates with many of us in our current climate, locally, nationally, and internationally, where debates around issues of citizenship are at the forefront of our minds. Even before we open the book, in the title itself, Citizen: An American Lyric, Rankine is challenging us to think about what the word American means. When we see or hear that word, do we exclusively think of the United States and perhaps Canada? Or are we thinking about “America” in the larger and more inclusive context of the American continent? Do we think of Brazil, Mexico, Jamaica, or Martinique?

Through images, situational videos, poetry, and songs, Citizen poses the complex question of what it means to be a citizen. Reading the text, many students are uncomfortable as we grapple with that question. We should be uncomfortable because our past and current history of inequality and [End Page 69] discrimination are haunting, painful, and troubled. Every page and image in the book invite us to think about the notion of citizenship. As an immigrant who moved to the United States at an early age, as an outsider–insider who speaks with an accent and negotiates in three languages, for me, the idea and essence of citizenship is directly related to identities, opportunities or lack thereof, and power. Citizenship is linked to immigration, nationality, ethnicity, and hospitality. What does it mean to be a hospitable country that welcomes citizens from all nations?

The Algerian-born French philosopher Jacques Derrida wrote extensively on the ethics of hospitality. He asks the following questions:

Must we ask the foreigner to understand us, to speak our language, in all the senses of this term, in all its possible extensions, before being able and so as to be able to welcome him into our country? If he was already speaking our language, with all that that implies, if we already shared everything that is shared with a language, would the foreigner still be a foreigner and could we speak of asylum or hospitality in regard to him?

(Derrida and Dufourmantelle 2000, 15–17)

Likewise, Immanuel Kant in his famous 1795 essay “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” provides a definition for hospitality:

Hospitality means the right of a stranger not to be treated as an enemy when he arrives in the land of another. One may refuse to receive him when this can be done without causing his destruction; but, so long as he peacefully occupies his place, one may not treat him with hostility.

He further reflects, “Originally, no one had more right than another to a particular part of the earth” (Kant 1795).

Hospitality must be intentional. The host must view the person seeking hospitality as a gift, not a burden. Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun in French Hospitality: Racism and North African Immigrants notes, “Hospitality is akin to generosity. . . . Hospitality can only exist where there is completely disinterestedness and a guest is seen as a gift.” (1999, 3–4). Despite the fact that the United States of America is a nation founded by immigrants, the government has consciously and intentionally created laws that have criminalized and delegalized immigrants at an alarming rate over the past three decades. Ironically enough, during the same time, some laws were created to facilitate entrance for certain types of immigrants who are deemed a valuable asset for the United States’s national interest. What is fascinating, though, is that the average...

pdf

Share