Liberties and Rights

As Chinese Vice President Xi concluded his visit to the U.S., the takeaways of the trip are still being debated. However, on Feb 20^th, the day of his return to China, the Chinese social network underwent shock as some Chinese ‘netizens’ gained access to Google+. Surprisingly, the first thing on their list was to “occupy” U.S. President Barack Obama’s Google+ page. ‘Netizens’ flocked to Obama’s page, posting hundreds of comments underneath each of his campaign updates. Due to the restriction on the number of comments, ‘netizens' even discussed the possibility of occupying Mitt Romney’s page. Although, a few ‘netizens’ have stressed on U.S. intervention of releasing Chinese civil rights activists under house arrest, most left trivial posts as evidence of their new gained privilege. For them, the significance of posting comments surpasses the context of these comments.

Freedom of speech in China is sometimes more of a privilege than a right, or a civil liberty as viewed in the United States. Some people forget they are entitled to speak freely, more importantly, their responsibility in speaking up against the wrongdoings of authorities and corporations. However, the entire population of the United States was not given the same civil liberties and rights since the founding of the country, as demonstrated through the inequalities of African-Americans, women and minorities in chapter seven. For African-Americans, why did Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. trigger civil rights movements a century after the Emancipation Proclamation? If decades of inequality and segregation lay the foundation for these movements, why was the outburst in the 1950s to 1960s? For a society without segregation or obvious inequality, what fosters the sense of civil liberties and rights leading to movements and possibly political change?