Page 102 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

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The Impact of U.S. Foreign Policy on the Oromo National Struggle
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According to Luana Ross,“One of the main motives of colonialism is economic ex-
ploitation, and cultural suppression almost invariably accompanies colonialism. . . .
Cultural suppression is a legal process that involves deculturation—eradication of the
indigenous people’s original traditions—followed by indoctrination in the ideas of the
dominators so the colonized may themselves assist the colonial project.The process,
in which the colonized are removed from their cultural context through enslavement
or transplantation, involves the abandonment of culture and the adoption of new ways
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of speaking, behaving, and reasoning.”
Since these decultured and marginalized Oromos accept jobs that work against
the Oromo national interests and their own interests coincide with those of the
Ethiopian colonizing structure, the majority of Oromos have rejected the OPDO
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and called them “maxanne,” “Gobana,” or traitors.These Oromo OPDO members
play the classic intermediary role described so well by Frantz Fanon when discussing
the dynamics of colonialism:“The intermediary does not lighten the oppression, nor
seek to hide the domination; he shows them up and puts them into practice with the
clear conscience of an upholder of the peace, yet he is the bringer of violence into
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the home and into the mind of the native.” Ethiopian colonialism not only has fa-
cilitated the transfer of resources from Oromos to Habashas through the physical
domination of Oromia and destruction of indigenous Oromo culture, but it also has
domesticated the minds of a few elements of Oromo society. Such Oromo interme-
diaries serve their own class interests and the interests of the Ethiopian colonizing
structure at the cost of Oromo society.
With the help of the West, particularly the United States, the Meles regime has
attempted to destroy the OLF and other independent Oromo organizations so that it
can freely control and exploit Oromia through the OPDO, its puppet organization.
Oromos have been targeted because of their economic resources and their political
opposition. 38 Since the majority of Oromos have supported the Oromo national
movement, the Meles regime has been targeting Oromo nationalists and the Oromo
people.The Oromo movement is the only national movement in the Horn of Africa
that has been denied assistance from the West, the Middle East, and Africa.Yet Oromo
nationalists have never endorsed any dogmatic ideology, and their stated objective is
to restore their indigenous Oromo democratic tradition, which they believe provides
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the foundation for a future form of Oromo self-determination and democracy. Fol-
lowing this background information, we now briefly explore how the United States
was founded as a country in the capitalist world system in order to account both for
the evolution of the racist ideology in its domestic and foreign policy and for its
wholesale adoption of a racist Ethiopian colonial ideology in its dealings with Ethiopia
and Oromia.
Global Capitalism, Racism, and the Formation
of the United States of America
A better understanding of racism in U.S. domestic and foreign policy requires an ex-
amination of the global capitalist system and its impact on the formation of the United
States, and as well as the historical relationships among racial/ethnonational groups in
the United States.The United States emerged in the process of the colonial expansion
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of the European-dominated capitalist world system. The global capitalist system hi-
erarchically organized world peoples through the processes of slavery and colonialism,