Page 10 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

CHAPTER I
Introduction
he main purpose of this book is to examine, compare, and contrast the African
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American and Oromo movements by locating them in the global context and
Tby showing how life chances changed for these two peoples and their descen-
dants as the modern world system became more complex and developed. Since the
same global system that created racialized and exploitative structures in African Amer-
ican and Oromo societies also facilitated the struggles of these two peoples, this book
demonstrates the dynamic interplay between social structures and human agencies in
the system.African Americans in the United States and Oromos in the Ethiopian em-
pire developed their respective freedom movements in opposition to racial/ethnona-
tional oppression, cultural domination, exploitation, colonial domination, and
underdevelopment.Although the focal point of this book is comparing and contrast-
ing the African American and Oromo movements, related topics explored include the
limits of nationalism, and the potential for revolutionary nationalism in promoting
revolutionary multicultural democracy.
These two ethnonational minority groups are similar in numerical size, but differ-
ent in political strength.The size of African American and Oromo populations are al-
most the same: about 30 million each. But African Americans constitute only 13
percent of the U.S. population of 270 million; Oromos are estimated between 40 per-
cent and 60 percent of the Ethiopian population of 60 million. Because of the
Ethiopian colonial politics,disagreement arises over the actual size of the Oromo pop-
ulation.While African Americans are one of the ethnonational minority groups in the
United States in number as well as in political and economic power, the Oromos are
the largest ethnonation in number, and yet have little political and economic power
in Ethiopia. Since the African American case is widely known and often considered a
paradigmatic case of racial/ethnonational oppression, the Black movement is well rec-
ognized. In contrast, the Oromo collective grievances and national struggle have been
denied legitimacy both regionally and internationally.
African Americans were forced to enter into the global capitalist system via racial
slavery in the seventeenth century. Oromos were forced into that same system during
the last decades of the nineteenth century after this system had gained strength and
intensity through colonialism and slavery. In 1619, twenty Africans (seventeen men
and three women) were brought by a vessel to a place the newly arrived English set-
tlers called Jamestown,Virginia.These Africans became “indentured servants who had
bound themselves to work for masters for a specified length of time in return for pay-
ing the cost of their transportation across the Atlantic. Indentured servitude had come