Comparing the African American and Oromo Movements

Abstract

In this chapter I explain how the racialized capitalist world system that produced modern slavery, colonization, genocide or ethnocide, cultural destruction and repression, and continued subjugation also facilitated the emergence and development of the African American and Oromo movements. Both African Americans and Oromos resisted slavery and colonization first without systematically organizing themselves. Their cultural and political resistance continued after their enslavement and colonization because these two peoples were assigned to the status of slaves and colonial subjects and second-class citizens by the United States and Ethiopia, respectively. In the case of the Oromo, the United States has been also involved on the side of the Ethiopian state to suppress Oromo society since the early 1950s.¹ This comparative chapter historically situates the emergence and development of these two movements by focusing on their similarities and differences.