Page 30 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

Oppressed nationalism emerges to change the nature of the existing oppressive state
or to create a new state. Human groups, territorial or cultural, with the emergence of
large-scale and long-term social changes invented or refashioned their respective states
to deal with complex issues. Despite the fact that the modern states and their interstate
structures are recent inventions, state elites and their supporters portray them as some-
thing “natural” that cannot be changed or modified. Bereciartu states that we must
“eliminate scholarly myths that,from the perspective of the already-consolidated nation-
Since global political
states, speak to us of the sacred and indivisible unity of nation.”
structures change constantly with socioeconomic and large-scale changes, there is not
any reason to accept the assumption that the nation-state is the final form of political
structure.The nation-state is not sacred; it is divisible or changeable.The same process
that facilitated the emergence of the nation-state contributes to the development of op-
pressed nationalism.The collective grievances of the colonized nations and external fac-
tors must be combined in studying and understanding national movements.
Recognizing that nationalism is a complex social phenomenon and that it has various
140
the study specifically deals with the national movements of Oromos and
forms,
African Americans.
Central Organizing Themes 139 Introduction • 21
The central theme of the book is that the national struggles of African Americans and
Oromos developed in opposition to the racialized or ethnicized forms of state power
that developed in the process of global capital accumulation.This form of state power
is characterized by racial/ethnonational domination,colonial exploitation,and cultural
repression or destruction.The African American and Oromo movements have been
struggling to change fundamentally the racialization/ethnicization of state power in
the United States and the Ethiopian empire respectively. This comparative study is
specifically framed within the context of the modern world system because both
African Americans and Oromos lost their rights by this system, and because the same
system also produced the sociocultural conditions that facilitated the emergence and
development of these two movements. “From an institutional perspective,” Skocpol
writes,“we should be looking for the cultural and ideological dimensions of all insti-
tutions, organizations, social groups, and political conflicts, so that we can integrate
those dimensions into all aspects of our explanations and accounts of both the roots
and outcomes of social revolutions.” 141
This study goes beyond a narrow definition of nationalism and considers the var-
ied forms of struggles taken by the African American and Oromo movements. It
touches upon the features of the African American and Oromo national movements
as struggles for multicultural democracy, national self-determination, civil rights and
social justice, and cultural rights and human dignity. Further, this study relates the
African American and Oromo movements to the global forces that struggle to hu-
manize and democratize the world by establishing a single standard for humanity.
These issues have set the stage for Chapters II and III. Chapter II explores how Black
nationalism developed in opposition to the American racial caste system. It also illus-
trates the features, causes, and outcomes of this movement. Chapter III introduces the
reader to the Oromo people and their national struggle. It addresses the issues of
Oromo nationalism—its emergence and development, its characteristics, outcomes,
problems, and prospects.