Page 116 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

CHAPTER V
Comparing the African American
and Oromo Movements
n this chapter I explain how the racialized capitalist world system that produced
modern slavery, colonization, genocide or ethnocide, cultural destruction and re-
Ipression, and continued subjugation also facilitated the emergence and develop-
ment of the African American and Oromo movements. Both African Americans and
Oromos resisted slavery and colonization first without systematically organizing them-
selves.Their cultural and political resistance continued after their enslavement and col-
onization because these two peoples were assigned to the status of slaves and colonial
subjects and second-class citizens by the United States and Ethiopia, respectively. In
the case of the Oromo, the United States has been also involved on the side of the
1
Ethiopian state to suppress Oromo society since the early 1950s. This comparative
chapter historically situates the emergence and development of these two movements
by focusing on their similarities and differences.
The Rise of African American Nationalism
African American nationalism developed as a mass movement during the mid-twentieth
century as a cultural,intellectual,ideological,and political movement whose purpose was
to achieve civil equality, human dignity, and development by overthrowing White racial
and colonial dictatorship.This development was facilitated by the cumulative struggles of
the previous generations,social structures and processes,and conjunctures.As we discussed
in chapter II, there were various forms of individual and group resistance struggles and
protonationalism in African American society prior to the twentieth century.The ances-
tors of African Americans both individually and collectively resisted enslavement in Africa
2
and fought against slavery on slave ships and later on the American plantations. Some of
3
the slaves engaged in revolts while others formed maroon communities after running
4
away from slavery. For 250 years,African Americans influenced North America through
their resistance struggle, which aimed to retain an African identity and restore their free-
5
dom. American racial slavery absolutely denied human freedom to the ancestors of
African Americans. It was during this period that African American peoplehood devel-
6
oped from the enslaved Africans of various ethnonational origins. This peoplehood de-
veloped from the past African cultural memory, the collective dehumanization of slavery,
and the hope for survival as a people in the future.All these and other forms of ideolog-
ical and cultural resistance established a strong social foundation from which cultural