The African Diaspora in Europe Today By Stephen Small June 15, 2018 2 *This post is part of our new blog series on Black Europe. This series, edited by Kira Thurman and Anne-Marie Angelo, explores what it means to bring the category of Black Europe to the foreground of scholarship on Europe and the Black Atlantic. The 2008 Marche des libertés demonstration in Paris celebrated the 160th anniversary of the 1848 abolition of slavery in France. The March also served to protest the continuing discrimination against Black people in France (Photo: looking4poetry, Flickr). In Europe today, non-Black people often ask—why are there so many Black people in Europe? But a far better question is ‘why are there so few Black people in Europe?’ The African diaspora in Europe began when Europeans first invaded and colonized Africa. Racist/sexist stereotypes and caricatures were first developed and disseminated across Europe before the United States and other nations across the Americas were ev