This essay is a response to a prompt that encouraged students to connect ideas from the book Justice by Michael Sandel with Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and an interdisciplinary unit on the colonial period in Africa. Students were asked to develop a definition of citizenship and support it with information from the two books and a variety of historical sources.

Botan A

The African people’s dedicated compassion and desire for the African continent has gradually been diminished in the last couple of centuries. Western colonialists took great advantage of our ignorance. The word “responsibility” plays an important role in our continent’s flaw.  It’s important in the sense that it has more to do with the Africans themselves rather than the western colonialists. We let them in our land and now we are paying the price. As Jomo Kenyatta once said “When the missionaries came, the Africans had the land and the Christians had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with your eyes closed. When we opened them they had the land and we had the Bible.” They came in and impacted the way Africans lived. The citizens of this great continent are missing. Leaders, who are willing to take responsibility for the sake of their continent, are nowhere to be found. Being a citizen of this continent, we should do something about the way African countries were exploited in the past. This is an idea called continental citizenship. It is the same as the communitarian idea of Michael Sandal’s book Justice where there is a desire for someone to take responsibility to his or her closest relative or place. The same way we are taking responsibility for our family, community or country, we should do the same for our continent as well. Some people might argue and say what about responsibility to the world and global citizenship? The answer to those people is that being a citizen of the world there are certain boundaries and limits and in order to cross those limits you need the conformity of everyone around the world and that is beyond our power. You can’t just go up to another part of the world without knowing what they prohibit and that is why global citizenship or taking responsibility to the world is not our first priority. There are certain things needed to be accomplished first. We know that family and country come first, but if your family and country are already affected by the impact of colonialism, how is there going to a prosperous family or country for that matter, who have their culture and religion intact. In order to fix what’s inside you have to fix the upper part first. This is where continental citizenship comes into play.

Throughout the continent, we have been thoroughly exploited from all parts of the African land. Western colonization spread through the African continent rapidly and the demand for raw materials increased significantly. The industrial revolution played a major role in the spread of western colonies through the continent. Whether it was rubber from the Congo, or gold from southern Africa, or even copper from the north, these things were taken from our land. There should have been a desire or an urge from the African people to take responsibility for our own continent. There is in fact a moral responsibility in our hands because as being a citizen of this great continent , we should step up for the things colonization has impacted and how it promoted Christianity, separated villages or communities, and finally the importation of modern weaponry.

Colonization came in the midst of the 19^th century and it had major impact on the African continent. The major colonial forces were most notably the British and the French. Each of them acted in their respective ways. However, their methods differed, the British used indirect rule and the French used direct rule. They built schools to promote Christianity.  In the Nancy Jacobs primary sources, which discusses the periods of colonial impact talks about the influence of the British in the Igbo land (modern day Nigeria) (3.2g). The British brought in missionaries that taught in the bible and that has caused most of the Igbo children to forget about their own tradition and that has made it difficult for them to practice mother tradition. There was a kid called Nweke, who grew up in a village, however, his older brother made him go and pursue western education. After learning the western education, he came back to his village. Nweke faced problems with the way his family practiced their tradition, having doubts about his own tradition. This made it difficult for him to practice his family’s tradition. This goes to show you how this method of promoting Christianity influenced the people of the African continent.

The French, unlike the British, gave jobs to local African people.  This was a method strictly to their benefit because it would strengthen its nation and influence them to act as French.  They mostly recruited former slaves as it said in one of the primary sources:

Even so, when the French came, they managed what many other local competitors did not and made defensive alliances against the invaders. Serving in the French imperial army were troops recruited elsewhere in West Africa, known as the Tirailleurs Sénégalais. This was a “volunteer” force, albeit manned by many former slaves who had been purchased to give military service. Other soldiers joined for adventurre or mercenary rewards. Africans of high social standing and Creoles sometimes became offices. (2.2c pg 77)

This method was a quick way of influencing the Africans culture and making them act as Europeans. As Walter Rodney said in his book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa “The main purpose of colonial school system was to train Africans to participate in the domination and exploitation of the continent as a whole…” The Africans themselves took part of the exploitation and those who worked for the colonial forces assisted in the exploitation of Africa. Therefore this has been a huge part of colonization and how Africa was hugely influenced.

Before Europeans came into the interior of Africa, people were united as one and there was a sense of togetherness. Different tribes were united through their culture and that kept them solely intact. But as the Europeans entered the Dark Continent all of that changed. Villages were broken apart and some of the people, who had their culture intact even converted to Christianity. The Europeans cut off their tradition and separated their clans. As Obierika said in his eloquent speech in the book Things Fall Apart:

How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our customs are bad, and our own brothers who taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our brothers have turned against us? The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart. (Loc 1778)

In this speech Obierika is addressing his people and probably the whole continent that the Europeans broke us apart and influenced people to move to their side. He is pointing out that the impact of colonialism was hugely a negative effect because it has caused division between people with the same culture.

Finally, the importing of modern technology also had a negative effect in the African continent. This all started off when the Europeans were exporting slaves out of Africa through the western coast. Unfortunately, we, through our ignorance traded weapons and wine for our own people.  These weapons such as guns, however, created violence and conflicts between communities and countries. Africans at that point of time didn’t have enough knowledge of this kind of weaponry and what it might do to them as consequence. As it said in the book Things Fall Apart “Okonkwo’s gun had exploded and a pierce of iron had pierced the boy’s heart.”(Loc 1306) This shows the liability of weapons in Africa and how the African people weren’t aware of what it might happen as a result. As being citizens of this great continent, we should be blamed for what has been done to our people. Our own ignorance led to not only Europeans taking advantage of us, but also from ourselves because we killed each other through these weapons. We have been blinded by our ignorance and that is why Africa has been underdeveloped. Colonialism has caused us to not only sell out our own people but it also brought something that destroyed us all.

Now in order for us to take responsibility there are two ways we can approach this impact and that is through resistance or abandoning the colonial language for good. We have seen in the past that some resistances didn’t go so well such as the resistance of the western African king Samouri Traore, who had fierce encounters with the French, but was captured at the end and all his kingdoms and villages were taken over by the French colony. However, there were some successful resistances such as the resistance of the man called Sayid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan or as the Europeans called him (Mad Mullah). He was a religious and nationalistic leader of the Somalis. He led an armed resistance against the British and the Italian for almost twenty one years.  He was the one that brought the land of Somalis to not forget of the culture and religion. He was also a famous poet, who addressed his people through poems. This made the Somalis to keep their strong culture intact without any interference from the Europeans. Now if we could do the same we can overcome all those impacts Europeans had in our continent.

The other approach is abandoning the colonial language for good, which is an idea purposed by a Kenyan writer called Ngugu Wa Thiongo. He believes that learning western education and their colonial language leads to loss of tradition and culture. This is true because in the story above Nweke, after he went on to learn western education, he came back and forgot about his own traditions. Thiongo also believes that learning the colonial education will make you stuck in between two worlds. Because we, as Africans grew up in our mother’s language, tradition, and culture, yet in learning the colonial language makes us see the world differently. You feel ashamed of your own language and start to adopt colonial ways of thinking. You also can’t interact or blend in with your own people. As Thiongo said “…the bullet was the means of physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation.” This means that colonial language led to the aftermath of it becoming the dominant language in Africa. This is a sign of  how heavily colonialism impacted Africa till this day.

By and large, as being Africans and as citizens of this continent we should take responsibility for the impact we have faced through colonial experience. In Africa, many countries adopted western ways whether it is through promotion of Christianity or language or even the way in which governments are held. This diminished our true patriotic nature of the African culture and traditions. As Thiongo suggested we can take responsibility by abandoning colonial language and showing our true culture and tradition through our mother language. The other option which wasn’t as successful as in the past is resistance and showing force and not letting in the westerners into our own continent. Overall, if we want our family and country to live in a prosperous life, we need to fix our continent first and clean up our own mess. If we have an efficient continent, then we can have an efficient country, community, and family.

Muna A

In most work of fiction or nonfiction, there is always an important lesson to be discovered and a significant amount of knowledge to be gained. One of these works would be the story, Animal Farm by George Orwell, whose main intention was not only to show and help us visualize what a society looked like during the Russian revolution but also make us realize that power corrupts human beings -a theme repeated throughout the book. Orwell anthropomorphizes his characters meaning he gives them human like behavior and distinctiveness. To summarize, the story is about farm animals who found the temptation to rebel against the humans who owned them. With effort and optimism, the rebellion becomes a success for them and at this they form a new society. They all decided and agreed to follow a constitution, which consisted of seven commandments. The pigs, who were the smartest of all took charge and, started the first step of their evil plan, to not do any work, while the other animals worked assiduously day and night. Afterwards, the pigs became corrupt as they started taking advantage of the other animals, which in response are loyal because of their lack of knowledge. However there is one animal, a donkey, who is different of the other animals in terms of intelligence. Orwell raises this question of responsibility through this character, Benjamin.  One specific night, Squealer, one of the pigs, falls off a ladder and spills a bucket of paint he had on his hand on the floor, the other animals including Benjamin come outside as the hear the noise. Even though Benjamin knew squealer was altering one of the seven commandments he makes the wrong decision to not tell the other animals. Benjamin had a huge responsibility to let the other animals know what squealer was doing in this specific moment because whatever affects the other animals affects him in some way, he can reason and others cannot, and finally he is the only hope they have and if he does not speak up, no other animal will.

Michael Sandel, a very skilled lecturer wrote about the different philosophical ideas that involve human rights, morals, and equality in his book Justice. Three of the philosophical ideas he covers are the utilitarianism, libertarianism, and Kantianism. Applying these three significant ideas on the responsibility Benjamin has is very crucial because you learn a lot seeing different perspectives and what they say about a certain argument.

A utilitarian would agree without a single hesitation that Benjamin has the responsibility to speak out against the injustice for one main reason. First he or she would say, if Benjamin speaks up he will be maximizing pleasure by making the majority of the animals happy, and in the other hand, he will also be minimizing pain by ending the suffering of the animals who work endlessly to achieve a society which will never happen. Someone might argue are the animals actually suffering? Since they do not even realize the pigs are taking advantage of them; additionally they think they are working hard for their own benefit. And if that is the case, how is Benjamin minimizing pain? A utilitarian will answer back, and say we all agree they are feeling pain as they do the hard work, and since they are working hard for a future they do not know, and have no control of, aren’t they still suffering? A utilitarian would think so. Others might argue what if Benjamin is afraid he might get in trouble and risk his life speaking up for the other animals. A utilitarian does not care about the consequences or punishment Benjamin might face if he speaks out, what he or she actually cares about is the welfare he will bring for the other animals as he speaks out.

The choice of whether saying or doing something is Benjamin’s. Whether he wants to speak or not depends on him, therefore it is neither his responsibility to speak up for the rights of the poor animals or explain to them any situation. This is what a libertarian would say if he was asked for his outlook on this situation. Libertarians as described in the book Justice have a tremendous respect for individual rights, they believe in self ownership and freedom. In the other hand, they oppose the idea of sacrificing one’s life to expand or maximize welfare for the majority, believing it violates individual rights. Both these cases could be applied to Benjamin. First, Benjamin has a complete ownership of himself, so if he chose not to speak up it is his choice and no one should interfere. Second, those who think for example, a utilitarian that Benjamin should speak out for the sake of maximizing happiness for the other animals is wrong, because it is against Benjamin’s freedom and rights. Overall, a libertarian would think Benjamin did not had any responsibility

To determine whether Benjamin had responsibility or not in this situation, a Kantian thinker as Sandel mentions, would first examine if Benjamin was acting autonomously or heteronomously as he made the decision to not say anything to the animals. If he chose his decision based on a moral reason which in this case refers to autonomous choice, then he did the right thing. But if he did it just to satisfy his desires and did not choose autonomously then what he did was morally wrong. I have stated before that one of the reasons Benjamin did not speak out might be a fear he might risk his life. A Kantian thinker would object Benjamin’s explanation and say; he did it to for a benefit for himself not because he made an actual moral reason. A Kantian thinker like a utilitarian does not care about the consequences the might happen in the end, what he or she cares is making an autonomous choice.

A society is like a house, each individual self plays a major and crucial part of everybody else’s life. Therefore if we see injustice been done to others we have the responsibility to say or do something because it will soon or later have an effect on us.  In the novel Animal Farm a character who holds this responsibility is Benjamin, the donkey. He is aware of every evil step the pigs are taking to destroy the lives of the poor innocent animals including him, but still decides not to say anything. I belief Benjamin made the wrong choice and should have explained to the animals that squealer was altering the laws at the point when they all come outside and find him laying on the floor.  With evidence and logic it is very likely the animals would have understood at least that squealer was changing one of the laws.

There is a very well known phrase that says,” If life gives you lemons make lemonade”. What if instead of lemons, life gave you a unique intelligence and incomparable knowledge that those surrounded around you do not have? Don’t you think it is your duty to let these naïve ones know if they are been deceived, because they do not have the capacity to figure it out on their own? This applies to the responsibility Benjamin has in Animal Farm. Given that he has the ability to reason, while the other animals cannot it is his duty to speak out or at least explain to them that pigs are taking advantage of them. On the other hand if Benjamin was in one of the other animals position, for example Clover who is mentioned once in the story that she had trouble expressing her feelings into words. Wouldn’t he want someone to end the injustice that was happening in Animal Farm? I believe he would have been thankful because at that point he will have realized how it feels to be not able to express your feelings. Numerous people would argue and say, just because we are gifted and exceptional, why is it our responsibility or duty to speak out for other’s rights? First, those people need to realize been gifted is of luckiness and there is a lot of possibility that gift could have been someone else’s, therefore they should be grateful that it was them who had the gift.  Second, if we connect this to Benjamin’s case, the fact that he is holding an important position makes him responsible because he is deciding whether to save the poor animals or not.

Overall, a society without a responsibility among people is like a house without a parent or a mature person.  In the remarkable novel Animal Farm we see a group of animals who form a society like any other in our real world. The corrupt leaders are represented by the pigs; there are the low class workers who are represented by animals like Boxer, and many others. Throughout the book we see the pigs taking advantage of the other animals by using propaganda. For the reason that they are dumb, they are easily convinced which enables them to believe anything the pigs say. The donkey in the story has a very important responsibility because he knows that the pigs were dishonest. If he could have spoken up the lives of the other animals could have been better.

This essay is a response to a prompt that encouraged students to connect ideas from the book Justice by Michael Sandel with Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and an interdisciplinary unit on the colonial period in Africa. Students were asked to develop a definition of citizenship and support it with information from the two books and a variety of historical sources.

Anonymous

The strongest form of responsibility comes from solidarity which dwells on the philosophy that we owe more to the people we share with similar history, interest, and therefore contribute mostly to our identity. The philosopher Alasdair Macintyre argues, “Human –beings are story-telling beings. I can only answer the question ‘what am I to do? If I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself apart’” (What is the Right Thing to do, Location 441.5). In his quote, Alasdair singles out the interesting fact that as humans we feel closer and more connected to people we have born with. He is right about story telling because every day we see how we choose our children over others, and how we give more care and attention to our elderly parents then others. To choose who we are a part of, we have to identify the people we share with similar experiences in the course of history.  Alasdair also implicitly proves wrong those who say we have no obligations at all because everybody is a part of storytelling. Everybody has association with history or experiences.

What does citizenship means? The term citizenship can be used differently depending on a level. When we are talking about the level of a country, citizenship means people are members of a particular country, and because of that, they should be loyal and patriotic to other people from that country. We can expand the term into continental citizenship which would mean people are members of a continent, and therefore they should be proud of it, and show deep interest to develop it. Indeed, citizenship overlaps with patriotism, or having love for you county more than anywhere else. Citizenship is like identity card that tells us where to live, who we live with, and we side with. The new philosophy of Communitarianism attempts to explain who we should have the first obligation to and who should we have at least obligation to. It is basically a narrative conception. Our love should start with our family, then our town, then country, then continent, and finally a citizen as the world. Communitarianism also explains why we should put our families before our country. It is because our family contributes a lot to our identity. We interact with our family more than any citizen in the world. Therefore, it feels right to say we have a special responsibility to other colonized people because in fact we share similar experiences, interest, and impacts of colonization.

We have more responsibility to other colonized people because a series of similar experiences shaped us alike. Colonization put our cultures at stake, and entrenched our countries under the shade of severe poverty. It is the interest of all African people to turn the impoverished African continent into rich one. That interests and dreams unite us into one people with an indomitable heart and strong favor of development. During colonization, imperialists started schooling in Africa, in order to modernize and convert young generations of African society into Christians. In most cases, schooling led to a generational shift. Although different society reacted differently, the reaction to that problem was the same. In Somaliland, it was not surprising that Mohamed Abdulla was fighting to save his people, culture, and religion (Mad mullah, 1-5). He saw the possibility of his people turning into monsters, so he enacted a mission to stop that. In West Africa, Samori Toure was fighting to protect the land of his Malinke people from French troops who threatened them to give up part of their land (Primary source, 1-2). In the name of Africa, and our rich culture, these great warriors ended their lives so that one day Africans would realize we are fighting against any reformer of African culture. As Africans, we all suffered from the misfortunate catastrophe of colonization. We strived hard to get to the point where we are today. The poverty and wars that inflict us today are still the results of colonization. Each year, billions of children die of Malaria and HIV because colonization precluded us the chance to develop our own factories and medicines. In many African countries, the children who are born with HIV are very high, and at very young age, these young children perish. Misfortunate circumstances like this can be called pulling factor that make all colonized people into unit family. Besides colonization, African people have similar culture.

The impact of colonization is a problem that makes us to have a special obligation because our opportunities to flourish on our own have been violated. When Europeans came to Africa, they didn’t bother to recognize that Africans were people with strong values of religion and rich culture. Filled with contempt, imperialists thought that their culture was superior and therefore they should make corrections to African culture and in return Africans should assimilate Europeans. Quickly, imperialists subverted the traditional leaders and their enhanced system. Europeans introduced the concept of warrant chiefs. In places like Igbo land, Britain used warrant chiefs to control people and as a way to communicate with Igbo people. Warrant chiefs were locally recruited and forced to impose high taxation on their people. They did what exactly British administrators told them which was to be harsh toward their people.( Warrant chiefs in Igbo land, 189) .One of the other impacts of colonization was Christianity and reformed African culture. Europeans disrupted and negatively influenced the way Africans lived and the social structure of their society. In Somaliland, during pre-colonial era most of the children were sent to Madrassa, and they grew up learning Koran studies. However, when Britain came to Somaliland, western secular education became prominent throughout the cities (Oral history). In Igbo land, when children were sent to British schools, they ended up turning against their own culture. In a history textbook, it describes how once a kid called Nweke left his family to study in school abroad. However, when he came back, he rejected to take part all the cultural ceremonies of his people (Family Struggles over schooling). In schools, children were thought that European culture was superior and African culture was inferior. Imperialists also implemented the concept of identity-cards, or giving one ethnicity more power than other ethnicities. The Rwandese civil-war that sparked in 1994 was the result of identity-card simmering issue introduced by Belgium. This war claimed the lives of many people and opened new doors for economic backlashes (Dancing under the glory of monsters, chapter 3-4)

The question that lies ahead for every African citizen is to wonder what African people can do about 19^th century imperialism. In truth, we can undo our past, but it our responsibility that we should constrain that all the aspects that colonization unleashed. It is degrading for our that hundredth of years after colonization we are still fighting over the artificial borders that imperialists deliberately constructed. In the course of history, Europeans wrote many books that portrayed Africans as uncivilized and savages. Wars and conflicts in Africa would just be another evidence of Europeans’ accusations. By avoiding civil wars and anything that weights our reputation as African down, we show that we are robust people with strong values. We should stand up for our continent and develop it. We should develop our factories and medicines so that we can save the millions of children dying of Malaria and HIV. We should create techniques so that people who in live poverty can have better lives.

Some people may argue that the people of our country should have more responsibility because we share same history, and make up great part of our identity. In other words, it means should patriotism overpower continental citizenship. What mostly people don’t realize is that patriotism is prejudice, and it is very wrong of us to base our morality in the eyes of an unjustifiable idea. Patriotism is prejudice because it makes no sense to support one country over another country when both are in the same continent. Because of strong bond that colonization formed between us, we are brothers, and love should fill our gaps. Similarly, it is a weak argument to say that my first obligation should count a citizen in the world. There are two objections to this. The first objection is the idea of identity. The world doesn’t contribute a lot to our identity, but our continent does since we interact more with the people of our continent in terms of language, and economy. The second objection is that there many actions happening in the world that we are not proud of. One of the citizenship rights is to stand up things that he/she is not proponent of. But as a global citizen am I bestowed upon those rights? What special rights do I have, to become a global citizen? Citizenship comes with special rights and global citizenship doesn’t carry those rights, so it can’t be our first obligation.

After analyzing all the impacts, experiences and interests that as Africans we share we came to the conclusion that we are people who have same goals and dreams for the continent. Colonization took a great toll of our energy, and destroyed many aspects of our culture. In some African societies, the culture of people almost went to extinct because of schooling and group of missionaries. Europeans took away the time which we should develop great medicines and factories. They crated conflict between us so that while we fight they can run way with our natural resources. We realize that what is best for us is to make techniques to terminate all negative impacts of colonization including identity-cards. We can only do this if we are united, and help each other.

This essay is a response to a prompt that encouraged students to connect ideas from the book Justice by Michael Sandel with Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and an interdisciplinary unit on the colonial period in Africa. Students were asked to develop a definition of citizenship and support it with information from the two books and a variety of historical sources.

Anonymous 

What is responsibility? And to whom are we responsible to?  Many philosophers have spent much time in trying to come up with clear answers to these questions, but unanimity has not been reached. The two most compelling, rival philosophical theories are: libertarianism and communitarianism. The libertarian theory focuses on individual rights, and suggests that one should only be held responsible for what they consent as Sandel says, “From the stand point of individualism, I’m what myself chooses to be. I may be my father’s biological son but I cannot be held responsible for what he did unless I choose to assume such responsibility.” This clearly leaves no room for the wrongs that one’s ancestors perpetrated in the past. On the other hand, communitarians disagree with libertarianism, and present the idea that we, humans, are storytelling beings and we received our identity from our historical ancestors as Alasdair Macintyre writes, “I inherit from the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my nation a variety of doubts, inheritances, expectations and obligations. These constitute the given of my life. This is, in part, what gives my life its moral particularity.” Communitarians also argue that it is nearly impossible to separate ourselves from our history as Alasdair Macintyre says, “The contrast with the narrative view of the self is clear, for the story of my life is always embedded in the story of those communities from which I derive my identity. I’m born with a past, and to try to cut myself off that past is to deform my present relationships.” Therefore, they strongly claim that this received identity creates not only moral responsibilities and obligations but also priority for some responsibilities over others, meaning that we are first responsible to the people who are closer to us. For instance, we are first responsible to ourselves, families, neighbors, local community, country, and all the way to regarding the people in the world as one community that lives on Earth.

Now this communitarian approach seems more compelling than the libertarian one since we cannot set ourselves apart from the long chain of our history, however, how we can determine which people are closer to us than others is still unclear. For example, people who define citizenship as the place where one is born into argue that we are more responsible to the people in our own country before we bear any responsibility to the people in other countries, just because we were born into that country. But this is not convincing, because being born into a country is just morally arbitrary, and we could be born into a country where we don’t have any ties with the dwellers.  For instance, many Somalis who are born into the Somali region of Ethiopia have their clansmen in Somalia, so why would these people have a responsibility to Ethiopia and its citizens before Somalia, where their people live in. With regard to this, we should be citizens to where the people we share with the same experiences, culture, interest and ideas live and belong, and thus have responsibility to those people. Our responsibility is to stand with them and defend their rights, without violating other’s fundamental rights, regardless of the cost even if we have to sacrifice ourselves, because if they are threatened, we will be threatened in the long run. With regard to this, Africans should first have responsibility to one another and their continent, because they have the same experiences from colonization; many people in the world look down on them because of their color, and their internal affairs are interfered by outside powers.

Firstly, the African people suffered together from the vices of colonization and the inhumane atrocities committed against them by the European colonizers. Many people argue that Europeans came to Africa with the evangelical purpose of disseminating Christianity or having mutual trade interests with the local Africans, but it turned out that many wanted to colonize Africa and its people and loot its resources. They brought their own governments in Africa and implemented their own systems as Achebe depicts in Things Fall Apart, “But apart from the church, the white men had also brought a government. They had built a court where the District Commissioner judged cases in ignorance. He had court messengers who brought men to him for trial.” (1742) This quote invalidates that Europeans came to Africa only for promulgating Christianity or trade interest, because they began distributing the local land to anyone that pleased them as Obeirike said, “The white man’s court has decided that it [a piece of land] should belong to Nnama’s family, who had given much money to the white man’s messengers and interpreter.” In fact, the Europeans dehumanized Africans and treated them with no dignity at all. They imprisoned anyone who questioned about their laws and whipped them incessantly. Achebe writes the following quote to show how the white men who came to Nigeria treated with the local people that did not abide by their ways of behaving, “They [prisoners] were beaten in the prison by the kotma [white men’s soldiers] and made to work every morning clearing the government compound and fetching wood for the white Commissioner and the court messengers.”

The above examples from Things Fall Apart are specifically pertinent to the colonization of Igbo people in Nigeria by the Britain, but it could be argued that most of the Europeans had the same beliefs and intentions about Africans. They all wanted to enslave Africans or extract their resources. To further elucidate this point, let us consider the primary source about the Kikuyu in Kenya, because it perfectly demonstrates that Kikuyu were treated just like the Igbo in Nigeria.  The Kikuyu were told that their land from now on would belong to the British king, as the source says, “This great king is now your king and this land is all his land, though he has said you may live on it as you are his people and he is as your father and you are all his sons” (75). The people did not have any king and all the land was passed to them by their ancestors, however, Britain did not treat them with respect, but rather wanted to extort their land. In addition, Britain set up its own governmental policy in Nairobi and imposed rules and taxes upon the local people, and also banned the traditional meetings of these people, and changed their ways of living as the source says, “The Council [the local elders] met again under the Mugomo tree. There were few, for the new rules of the Pink Cheeks had forbidden big meetings. I looked around at my friends and was sad. Their faces were anxious and their skin was loose on their bones” (100). Just like the Igbo, Britain built schools in the local districts and taught the Bible and limited education, and anyone who turned down its policy would be punished. Now we can see that colonization affected throughout Africa and all Africans suffered from the vices of the white men. Therefore, Africans should have a full responsibility to one another and defend their rights together because they underwent the same horrible situations. If Africans don’t work together and stand together today, colonization could come back just as it came in the 1880’s. And if this happens, they could undergo another worse form of colonization. Yet the only way that Africa could prevent a future colonization is to be unified and act as a single, inseparable community, where everyone is a citizen to the continent and ready to sacrifice themselves for the well-being and the defense of their continent.

Secondly, another very strong experience that should bind all Africans around the world together, despite of where and how they dwell, is the fact that they are looked down by the people in the world. The segregation and discrimination in the United States are ideal examples of how Africans were put down. The black community was regarded as lower class citizens and was not permitted reacting with the white community just because of the arbitrary color of their skin. The better schools, hospitals, restaurants, etc. were only for the whites. How one could be segregated based on their naturally obtained color? What a ridiculous system! Did the whites work for their white color?  More other compelling pieces of evidence that show that Africans were looked down are provided in Things Fall Apart. When European missionaries settled in Africa, Nigeria specifically, they began considering African people as cultureless savages. They ignored the local people’s traditions and beliefs and presented theirs with coercion as Achebe says, “He [the white man] told that they [the Igbo] worshipped false gods, gods of wood and stone” (1483). All these examples show how Africans were denigrated and humiliated. So these shared experiences should bind all Africans together if Africa wants to be safe in the long run. Their similarities are greater than their differences; therefore, all Africans should cooperate and be the backs of one another to be able to defend their traditions and rights.

Thirdly, the African continent as a whole faces common problems since it is one of the few continents in the world with tremendous resources that have not yet been extracted. Unlike Europeans and Americans, Africans are not fully capable of extracting their resources because they do not have the technology and the skills necessary to do so. Therefore, many countries, including Europeans, Asians and Americans, are casting covetous eyes on the continent. Each one of these foreign countries has its own political systems and philosophy and wants to befriend with some African countries so that it could get cheap materials from Africa and send its products back to Africa, where it could find markets. Africa is one of the very few continents that spend excessive money on imports from other continents and do not export many lucrative items because there is not a good trading relation between the African countries. African countries need to set up their own trading system so that they are less dependent on foreign and imports and aid because we do not know what the future may throw to it down the road. Another problem that most of the Africans are disappointed is that their internal affairs are interfered by other powers, Western powers in particular, which pull their continent’s progress down. In Libya for example, after their president was taken down chaos and instability raged the country and many people died. And the hypocrisy in the Libyan situation is that the powers who were promising that they will end dictatorship and bring freedom and equality into Libya brought slaughtering and killing and then walked away. So the African countries should work together relentlessly to provide security to their people and protect from the hypocrisy of the outside powers.

However, some people around the world including even some Africans may not agree that we have to first bear responsibility to Africa, because they believe national responsibility takes over any other kinds of responsibilities. There is not a clear, unanimous definition for global citizenship because people look at the world differently, however, there is still common-ground.  According to an article written by Ron Israel, co-founder of The Global Citizens’ Initiative–an organization that fosters global citizenship—he says, “A global citizen is someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community’s values and practices.” Bearing Ron’s definition in mind, the world community could be regarded as a single community because today’s modern technology made it possible for people to communicate with different people in distant places very quickly. In this way, we may feel that we are part of the world community; tackling common problems together like global warming, extinction of wild species and fresh water depletion can be ideal examples in which people could cooperate in solving them. However, the problem arises from the second part of Ron’s definition “……whose actions contribute to building this community’s values and practices.” It’s very apparent that the world is dominated by Western influences and thus most of its values are built on Western cultures and ideas driven by secularism, therefore, it is here where global allegiance is difficult. Democracy for example, is regarded as one of the very essence of global values but when it is scrutinized very closely; its roots are deeply planted in Western cultures of secularism. To emphasize, the UN is considered as a neutral organization, but there is no doubt that it a Western organization where Western leaders dictate to weaker nations. To make the world a better planet where everybody is abiding by its rules and contributing its values, the rules and values themselves must be established together mutually by all the nations and ethnicities that dwell in the world, otherwise, how could certain people succeed in coercing others to follow their ways of living and looking at the world?

Finally, one has different responsibilities to different people based on how many interactions, interests and ideas they share with these people. Having responsibility to some people would mean doing whatever possibly one could to protect the rights and dignity of those people. Africans are people who suffered from colonization together, regarded as inferior, and encounter similar problems in their routines. Therefore, they should have the first responsibility to one another and their continent to ease any problems that life throws to them down the road. But we also need to bear in mind that all the people around the world need to sit together and discuss on how they should manage their planet with the exclusion of none.