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Does Black Revolutionary Love Still Exist?

Recently, I went on a girls' holiday – actually, it was a black girls' holiday. This was purely by accident as some of our non-black friends could not make the trip. However, I was acutely aware whilst planning the trip to Marbella that we were a black group of women and that may make things a bit difficult.  We know from incidences such as that at DSTRKT nightclub in London that it can be difficult for black people, especially black women to gain entry to clubs or bars, with some people in the industry suggesting that there can be a certain ‘quota’ for black people in high end establishments. I rarely venture to expensive London nightclubs now as I find the process exhausting, however, I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the clubs in Marbella from Sisu to Nikki Beach gave my crew of predominately dark-skinned black women an almost royal welcome. 

However, whenever we encountered a group of young black men, I often found they avoided us and were reluctant to even engage in polite conversation. Now, I wish I could say this was an isolated experience but it did not just happen on this holiday. It is something that many of my black female friends regularly experience. Often our Black British male counterparts do not seem romantically interested in us. Data from the 2011 Census shows that about 20% more black men in the UK enter into inter-racial relationships than black women do and amongst younger age groups (likely due to more tolerant attitudes) the numbers in inter-racial relationships seems to increase.

Many of us are well aware of the arguments about why there seems to be such a discrepancy in the number of men wanting black female partners – black women being the furthest away from western beauty standards, stereotypes of black women having an ‘attitude problem’ or being high maintenance. The criticism and stereotypes of black women seem to be endless.