Page 19 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization
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exist and determine our reality within the so-called nation-state. Of course, class and
gender contradictions also exist within oppressed ethnonations. Since the ideology of
the nation-state has been historically constructed upon racism or ethnocentrism, clas-
sism, and sexism, our membership in certain racial/ethnonational, gender, and class
categories within the nation-state determines our social position in a given country
or an empire.
State nationalism has had a negative effect upon ethnocultural diversity via the im-
position of the culture of the dominant ethnonation on other peoples within the na-
tion-state, while ironically even recognizing cultural diversity within the interstate
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system.
Gurutz Bereciartu remarks that the question of the subjugated population
or “the national question is a historical one that has not been resolved satisfactorily
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since the first formation of nation-states in Europe.” Some state elites used structural
and cultural assimilation effectively; for instance, the English settlers created a White-
dominated society in the United States by structurally and culturally assimulating dif-
ferent European ethnonational groups using the ideology of whiteness and apartheid
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democracy. The English settlers dominated the thirteen American colonies by per-
mitting other Europeans access to Anglo institutions such as the economy, govern-
ment, religion, education, media, and marriage. Since the assimilation included
structural and cultural elements, it was successful. Other European groups were con-
sequently anglicized and almost became the replica of the English settlers under the
guise of “Americanization.” But for nonwhites, particularly African Americans, struc-
tural assimilation was not possible because they were denied access to these major an-
glicized institutions. But they were de-Africanized and forced to learn the English
language, culture, and religion while being denied structural assimilation. Using cul-
tural and structural assimilation in creating White society, the Anglo-American ruling
class also created and perpetuated the racial caste system by denying structural assim-
ilation to nonwhite Americans. 59
When the practice of destroying ethnocultural diversity through forced assimilation
to create a “national” culture has become the goal of state nationalism, the subjugated
peoples who have been denied structural assimilation and whose history and culture
were condemned to death by state nationalism and racism have sought cultural diver-
sity.Some ethnonational movements have sought national independence or autonomy,
but others have sought as their goal, along with cultural diversity, structural assimila-
tion in order to achieve access to, and equality within, the social institutions of the
economy and the polity. Both African Americans and Oromos initially sought struc-
tural assimilation and cultural diversity in their respective struggles.When the goals of
structural assimilation and cultural diversity failed, Oromos started to struggle for na-
tional independence. It is the flaw of the politics of some scholars to emphasize cul-
tural difference and ignore and even dismiss the structural issues, including the
prospect of structural assimilation as an emancipatory possibility.
State elites and some scholars have misunderstood and mispredicted “the assertive re-
naissance of nationalism” and declared the inevitability of the assimilation and dissolu-
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tion of the colonized populations. Theoretically, nationalism, as a cultural and political
vision, aims at abolishing dictatorial or colonial regimes by establishing national self-de-
termination, popular sovereignty, citizenship and democratic rights, and the rule of law
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for people that see its common destiny. Despite the fact that national movements have
failed to promote popular or representative democracy and to eliminate social stratifica-
tion, nationalism has remained the strongest ideology that contributes to large-scale and