Black sexualisation WoW style

Ok, this is a bit of a rant.

The south bank centre runs the Women of the World WoW festival once a year now and I may be suffering from the fact that nothing is going to compare to the first feeling I got of attending the event, but I was a little disappointed by some of the line up this year.

I went to the sexualisation of black women event hoping for some insightful debate on how black women fare in the realm of sexual imagery.

Indeed, some interesting points were raised about the number of black women who were abused by their partners proportionally and the phenomena of denigrating darker black women's skin tones, which is truly heart breaking.

However, then I felt the debate started to turn a little south.

Troubling ideas

The issue of white women being prized over black women, seems bizarre.

I have to say that is very damning and de-humanising of black men, not saying that they never do this, but the dialogue seemed to tar all black men in this way?

I felt similarly disturbed by claims that black women were punished for not being white.

Physical abuse may have more to do with other social and economic strains affecting black people, rather than because of any desire among black men to punish black women.

Again, not saying it doesn't happen, but I truly believe it's not all about race.

Let's just blame it on race

Then claiming that idealisation of lighter skin tones comes from the white community, it is a very select and privileged set of white people in charge of things like fashion magazines and they serve to dissempower both white and black women by trying to insist on a standard.

The debate started to simply sound prejudiced.

All white women, just like all black women are not the same.

This dialogue helps no one by being purely confrontational.