Defend - let me give it a crack on the view you forwarded from the top of my head.
Yes politicians use the discourse of ethnic nationalism all the time in order to increase their own power.
However, the assumption is that ethnic nationalism isn’t necessarily bad because it can be a way for minority groups to protect a culture or language that would otherwise be swallowed up by the majority group. Oromo is not a minority.
So we didn't mind when TPLF started doing it 20 something years ago; where did that tolerence take us?
As you pointed out, we don't see improvement today from what we had the in the 90's. Things seem to have gotten worst.
More collaboration in music, culture of the different ethnic groups, as we had it during Derg era should have continued. The Tamagne generation of artists (Kinet) who were multilingual were doing excellent work. They were Ethiopian nationalists that should have been left alone doing what they were doing best. The replacement brought fragmented competition with a result of some "ghetto culture" but, few quality stuff.
Again more collaboration in music etc. while doing their own thing would have benefited all ethnic groups. Kind of a continuation of the past but, emphasis can change depending on the audience; meaning more songs played for the majority but, bring in nationally recognized/understood flavors of songs as well etc. We can't afford not to collaborate because we have limited budget.
I would argue that ethnic nationalism is certainly bad when it is used by a majority group in order to try to erase the language and culture of other minority groups. The Oromo of the "mogassa" persuasion may try to do that as we speak because they think it's good for us and the impact is going to be worst than what TPLF/EPRDF tried to do.
You may not agree but, I don't think there was Amara ethnic nationalism or domination in the past; that is why ABN looks strange to many of us today. It scares the hell out of others to the point of wanting to put a bunch of them to jail. For what? What have they done?
My thing is, ethnic nationalism among smaller groups is perfectly fine (except a TPLF led type who fkd it up!
) as they’re a minority protecting a culture that could otherwise be in danger of being wiped out. Tegrai wasn't in danger to be wiped out anyway; not only they're one of the fouders of Ethiopia, have same root in geez language with Amara; Amharic won in the rest of Ethiopia because it was easier to learn with their help as well; many of the best teachers of Amharic who came to Addis through churches were Tigreans; so why not the two allow the languages to merge and give the rest of us a break.
Having said that, from now on, when minorities come to power as TPLF did, they need to take it easy, should curve their own ethnic nationalism to the lowest level. Let us all be humble is my point. Talking about being humble, we thought TPLF saying EFFORT kegna! was bold however, OLF/ODP threw a bomb on us by saying AA kegna! LOL!
Bottom line, in globalization, we will all pick the best attributes from all groups anyway; so, let us not distress too much when we assimilate some.
DefendTheTruth wrote: ↑15 Aug 2019, 05:01
The Ethiopian beauty lies, among others, in its pluralistic culture and integrated social fabric, at least when seen from the grass-root level. The Ethiopian people didn’t know the ugly phenomenon of a ghetto, an idea that was used to be an alien to the fabric of our social makeup, at least until the ethnicization of Ethiopia for the sake of political expediency began to take a foot hold in the country before a couple of decades. Ethiopians used to share whatever they had or lacked equally among each other. Rich and poor shared the same neighborhood, no one had any legal right or other form of moral authority to create any exclusive club of any sort for just those deemed to be part of the groups of that someone’s associates.