Why are there so few black bikers?

Ok, going to have to be a bit careful here - this is one of those tricky subjects that no matter what you try and say and how you try and say it, people are likely to raise their eyebrows or question motives. I want to pitch this right so let's see how we go with it....

The ride into work the other morning was a nightmare - what is it about a bit of rain that turns other road users into idiots? Anyway, about half way, I stopped at a set of lights and a guy on a GSX-R600 pulled alongside. We exchanged a few words, as you do - "bloody nightmare this morning", "roads are like a poxy obstacle course" "did you see what that twat did" - sort of thing. Anyway, I noticed that the fella was black (I'm observant like that....!) and it prompted me to recall a question I've often thought to myself but have never had an answer to (or indeed ever voiced): why are there so few black/minority ethnic bikers?

For the record, there is no hidden agenda here - it really is a genuine question. In terms of numbers, I have only ever known two black guys that ride

• one (Hutch), a clubmate, rides a KTM and VFR, the other (Barry), a work colleague, a Fireblade, which he's turned into a bit of a cafe-racer type thing. That's it - and for whatever reason I don't see many others on the road either. All this having lived in and around one of the biggest and most cosmopolitan cities in Europe all my life.

Brothers.... (though judging by the size of mine and Steve's tits, maybe "sisters" is more appropriate...!)

I suppose one could have levelled the same observation at women years ago. This was largely a macho/chauvanistic/acceptance issue, which thankfully has gradually eroded over the years. Women are now accepted as serious and knowledgable riders and the biking fraternity is better for it in my view. So why hasn't the same happened in BME communities? The answer, at least to some extent, must be cultural. Biking has traditionally been seen purely as a male orientated thing - and white males at that. The biking culture is also identified with particular music genres/performers - again mostly white and male, as are the audiences in the main. That type of culture seems ingrained.

I also wonder whether access and opportunity has been a problem. Without wishing to sidetrack into the social politics of the era, the biking revolution that happened in the 1950s and 60s also coincided with a period of large scale immigration and the people coming into this country generally went into low grade and poorly paid jobs. So I assume that the mothers and fathers in successive generations were more concerned with putting food on the table and establishing a place within a resistent society - therefore, a biking culture didn't take hold in those communities.

Or is there a problem within the biking fraternity? I personally haven't witnessed anything myself but it has often been suggested that parts of the biking world - in particular, the "outlaw" groups - have a certain "reputation" in these matters. Bikes tend to attract macho personalities. Macho personalities attract other macho personalities, forming like-minded groups - and this starts to take us into what gang culture is all about. A gang is by definition a group that has common interest. To the uninitiated, biking is often seen as synonymous with Hell's Angels and the like, and generally you don't see much in the way of diversity in biker gangs. Certain patch clubs simply don't allow black members. I find this thoroughly depressing - bikers as a group are often discriminated against so it seems to me that the last thing we should be doing is discriminating against others.

A look across the pond reveals far greater numbers and a great many different biker groups whose membership is almost exclusively black. So not only are there more black/minority ethnic people riding bikes, they also gravitate towards their own groups. Does this suggest that a kind of biking apartheid is going on? I don't know enough about North American society and biking culture to be able to comment, so maybe readers over there could? In this country, it seems to me that the numbers are far fewer and I don't really know why - though hopefully this will change as the country becomes ever more culturally mixed (and accepting) and people become relatively affluent compared to their parents.

I don't really have any answers, and maybe the question doesn't even need asking. The whole thing just intrigues me. Over to you for your thoughts....