Page 113 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization
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made the same sort of assumption, that is, that Oromos were negotiating their defeat
and destruction “to yield up what civilized peoples had a right to possess.”
Marc Baas, U.S. Charge d’Affaires, on November 14, 1991, said that “Oromos have
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been ‘niggers’ of this society.”
Subsequent policy reveals that U.S. foreign policy
elites and the U.S. government do not believe that these “niggers” of Ethiopia can play
a decisive role in determining the essence of the Ethiopian state despite the fact that
the so-called niggers are a numerical majority and possess the major resources on
which Ethiopia depends for existence.This racist mind-set allows the U.S.government
to ignore the Oromo people.Accordingly, Oromos who are considered as “real black”
and “less advanced” deserve less than Habashas who are considered as less black in the
thinking of U.S. foreign policy elites.These foreign policy elites do not even bother
to reconcile the contradiction that there is no skin color difference between Habashas
and Oromos, only cultural and political differences. In the thinking of most White
Americans, blackness denies rights and power. Since racism is a means of phenotypi-
cally and culturally categorizing people to justify their unequal treatment, Oromos are
seen as darker and less advanced than Habashas.
Because of imperialist economic and strategic interests and these racist assumptions,
the U.S. government does not recognize the struggle of Oromos for self-determination
and democracy despite the fact that the Oromo political leadership endorsed its policy
of “democracy promotion.” Since the biological concept of race can be easily chal-
lenged, U.S. policy elites mainly apply “development theory” rather than racist biolog-
ical notions when they deal with countries like Ethiopia. They do this without
changing the long-established American views on race. According to Michael Hunt,
“Policy makers, whose impulse to see the world in terms of hierarchy was even more
at odds with the need for political direction, found their way out of their bind by re-
casting the old racial hierarchy into cultural terms supplied by development theorists.
No longer did leaders dare broadcast their views on barbarous or backward people,race
traits, or skin color. It was instead now the attributes of modernity and tradition that
fixed a people’s or nation’s place on the hierarchy.” 125 The concepts of tradition,moder-
nity, and development are used by U.S. foreign elites to support Ethiopian state elites
despite the fact that Habasha and Oromo societies are at similar levels of economic and
technological development.Oromos are assigned to serve the interests of Ethiopian and
global elites at their own cost.Hence,through the process of racialization/ethnicization
of the division of labor, Oromos must be poor farmers, servants, and soldiers and not
state elites, intellectuals, policy makers, and traders.
Only a few Oromos who have subordinated their interests and the interests of the
Oromo people to that of Habashas are allowed to become intermediaries between
Habasha elites and Oromo society.The Tigrayan-led regime, with the tacit agreement
of the West, particularly the United States, has targeted for destruction Oromo intel-
lectuals and business elites who attempt to play a decisive role in regional and global
politics through promoting the Oromo struggle for self-determination and democ-
racy. 126 The Oromos’current refusal to accept the racialization/ethnicization of the di-
vision of labor and their attempt to achieve freedom and democracy have annoyed
Habasha and U.S. policy elites.Therefore, it is tacitly accepted by the West, particularly
by the United States, that the Tigrayan government suppress the Oromo national
movement by destroying its leadership and Oromo activists. Despite the fact that the
OLF agreed to form a federal democratic Ethiopia, during the transition period, the
West and the Meles regime rationalized their actions by labeling the organization as