Page 13 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization
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such an understanding has caused Blacks in the diaspora and some Africans to see
“Ethiopia” as a symbol of Black freedom when Africa was under European direct
colonial occupation.This uncritical position emerged from lack of understanding that
the Ethiopian empire was created by the alliance of Ethiopian colonialism and Euro-
pean imperialism during the “scramble” for Africa by enslaving and colonizing Oro-
mos, Sidamas, Somalis,Walayitas, and other ethnonations in the Horn Africa. Ethiopia,
which participated in commodifying some Africans and establishing settler colonial-
ism in Oromia and other regions, would not deserve to be the symbol of Black free-
dom, but the symbol of racial/ethnonational oppression and exploitation. As it is in
the interest of African Americans to identify all forms of racism, and it is in the inter-
ests of all oppressed groups to challenge and change the racialized global capitalist
structures, Oromos have a stake in learning about American Blacks so that they can
find effective ways of fighting against the American imperialism and global racism that
support and justify the Ethiopian colonial state.
At present, when some African American elites with other progressive forces strug-
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gle to positively change U.S. foreign policy toward Africa, it is necessary that these
forces of social change understand how the racism of Ethiopia is intertwined with
Western racism to maintain racial/ethnonational stratification. Since the Oromo
movement challenges the alliance of Ethiopian, or Habasha, and Western racism and
imperialism, it is one of the African progressive forces that needs to be recognized to
bring positive social change in Africa.Hence,there is a need for dominated groups like
African Americans and Oromos to know about each other’s movements so that they
can develop a common frame of reference that can help them to struggle for revolu-
tionary multicultural democracy on regional and global levels by challenging the
racialized global capitalist structures. As African Americans need to develop a critical
understanding of “Ethiopia” by abandoning a Black North American perspective that
claims everyone in Ethiopia is Black and the same, Oromos need to recognize the
global nature of their oppression by comparing and contrasting their struggle with that
of Black Americans and that of others.This book attempts to open a way for such a
critical and global understanding.This introductory chapter deals with theoretical and
methodological issues by developing an analytical framework that draws from theories
on the world system and globalization,nationalism,revolutions,and social movements.
Furthermore, this chapter frames the African American and Oromo nationalisms in
the context of the capitalist world system.
Methodological and Theoretical Approaches
Writing this book has been a difficult and complex task encountering several theo-
retical and methodological challenges. Few scholars use a comparative perspective to
address the dialectical interplay of social structures and human agencies in the capital-
ist world system as a way of demonstrating long-term and large-scale global social
transformation. These significant issues are largely absent in studies of nationalism,
globalization, and social movements as we shall see. Global studies focus primarily on
wide structural changes in the capitalist world system and pay less attention to the role
of a human agency. In order to overcome these limitations, this work combines a
structural approach to global social change with a social constructionist model of
human agency and nationalism.The book demonstrates that the African American and
Oromo movements are an integral part of the global projects that have been attempt-