Page 8 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

Preface
ighting against the Injustice of the State and Globalization: Comparing the African
American and Oromo Movements grew out of my personal life experiences as an
FOromo/African/Black and my scholarly interests as a critical social scientist.
I was born and raised in Oromia (Ethiopia). Since my people, the Oromo, have been
the colonial subjects of Ethiopia for a little more than a century, I personally know
the bitterness of being treated as a second-class citizen. I remember the cultural hu-
miliation I went through when I was receiving colonial education. My refusal to ac-
cept second-class citizenship in the Ethiopian empire and my determination to
oppose Ethiopian settler colonialism encouraged me to participate in the Oromo
national movement.When the Ethiopian government targeted Oromo nationalists
for assassination or imprisonment, I was forced to seek political asylum.As a result,
I ended up in the United States as a political refugee in the early 1980s.
After living in the United States and observing the conditions of African Ameri-
cans, I developed a keen interest in exploring the parallel patterns of racial oppression
and exploitation, the racialization/ethnicization of state power, and the way the sub-
jugated ethnonations respond to colonial institutions to change their subaltern posi-
tions in the modern capitalist world system.The idea of writing this comparative book
came to maturation through my experience of teaching various courses, such as Race
and Ethnicity,African and African American Studies, the Modern World System, and
the Sociology of Development, at the University of Tennessee. I experimented with
my theoretical ideas on my undergraduate and graduate students, who were eager to
learn and to comment on the experiences of African Americans and Oromos in the
global context. Some of my former graduate students are professors today, and we still
maintain our intellectual relationship and dialogue.
Further, this book reflects my accumulated research experience and scholarship in
the fields of sociology, political economy, and African and African American studies. I
have been researching and writing on the struggles of Oromos and African Americans
for some time. My personal and intellectual experiences have enabled me to write this
comparative and challenging book, which goes beyond the limitation of current
scholarship. By challenging the paradigm of intellectual elites and their knowledge of
domination, this book develops an alternative knowledge of liberation.
I have benefited from the suggestions,comments,and critiques of several colleagues
in writing this book. My colleagues and friends Bonnie K. Holcomb, Bill Robinson,
Faye Harrison, Jon Shefner, Sisai Ibssa, and Baissa Lemmu read drafts of the book and
provided important feedback that assisted me in refining my arguments and ideas. I
have also greatly benefited from my discussion with my colleague Sherry Cable on
theories of social movements. My intellectual discourse with scholars from various