Where Have All the Negroes Gone?

This wasn’t my fight, this Transatlantic Business Dialogue. You know it as TABD. I call it The Association of Big Daddies or, better yet, a group of insanely wealthy white guys controlling how the rest of the world does business.

I initially assumed the protesters would be the equivalent of Soccer Moms. You know — bored, upper-class, well-fed, Volvo-pushing white folks enraged by the potential that other bored, upper-class, well-fed, Rolls-Royce pushing white folks would snatch the world’s economic power all for themselves.

Well, boo hoo.

You see, black folks don’t normally get all off into protesting things that aren’t overtly race-based or that don’t deal with the tangible, the everyday. Sounds foul, but that’s who we are.

And I can tell you that, after hours of trying to get a better vantage point during the three days of protesting and rallying surrounding the TABD conference in Cincinnati, we blacks were scarcely there.

Where were we?

A handful of black protesters were in front of Music Hall Nov. 16, three of whom raged against the alleged police misconduct during the apprehension and custody of Roger Owensby and Jeffrey Irons.

Money is power. We all know that. But I’m not so sure blacks understand to what degree economic decisions are being made without our say-so or our basic understanding.

Can you say apathy? I can.

So can Suhith Wickrema, a volunteer for the Coalition for a Humane Economy (CHE), the local clearinghouse for groups involved in education and advocacy about economic globalization. A Sri Lankan, Suhith, 37, has an uncanny understanding of blacks and our interpretations of race, class and the interconnectedness of oppression.

He’s almost too sociologically astute to be true. Suhith says that during planning sessions, rallies and marches for various causes, the absence of blacks specifically, and the lack of people of color generally, is disheartening, if not troubling.

“The racial oppression and class oppression in Cincinnati,” he pauses his thick, tumbling accent to find the right words, “people don’t realize the connection.”

“I’m tired of looking around and being the only non-white,” he says by phone from his Mount Auburn home early on the morning of Nov. 17 as he prepares to coordinate the CHE information van for the day’s anti-TABD activities. “I’m skeptical about going (to meetings) the next time, not because (whites) did or said anything but because of the physical and emotional uncomfortability.”

Yeah, you might be thinking that getting behind a cause doesn’t mean joining a social club. But a fundamental camaraderie is necessary to make that cause a success.

The particular apathy of many blacks Suhith has encountered in Cincinnati, however, is like a pall, as palpable as humidity. Forget camaraderie. We’re asleep.

“Where I’m coming from I have a much better understanding of race and class oppression,” he says of his native country. “Imperialism came from that.”

So it is that Suhith resides not only in America but in its curious gray area. Upon first glance, he appears black. Look closer, and his dark complexion, deeply waved hair and dark eyes belie another, more exotic nationality. Many of his experiences are imbued with race, but they’re just this side of the black man’s. Still, they’re racial. America is just that way. Everything is colored by race and wrapped in money.

“As an immigrant of color, I’ve realized the main divide in this country is a divide of race,” he says. “If I had to pick sides, I certainly couldn’t pick the other side, I guess.”

To mend this split and reattach the two sides of himself — the darker brother who’s not black and the Sri Lankan who’s not white — Suhith plans to address what he deems the “lack of African-American participation in non-racial issues and the lack of white participation in racial issues.”

What’s his recommendation? Start with a good book.

“I think there’s education that needs to be done,” he says. “My idea is to do a reading group, reading African-American scholars who write about class like Manning Marable, Cornel West or Angela Davis. I’m personally hurt by this dismissal of class in the African-American community.”

And I’m personally bewildered by our absence from issues not dipped in sepia hues.

Case in point: When I told my oldest brother Friday night I was on my way to Union Terminal to check out reports there had been a fracas between TABD protestors and cops, he was typically cynical. He reminded me of my attitude at the outset of the TABD scenario.

“Oh, they’re just a bunch of white crybabies,” he said.

They are, until an issue or cause becomes of significance to us. Then, does that make us a bunch of black crybabies?

If so, let’s all cry together.

This article appears in Nov 22-28, 2000.