Black & Asian Relationships Are About More Than Sex

Priya Gopaldas and Teddy Soares’ Love Island pairing sparked the same tired stereotypes that Black and Asian couples still face today — proof that the conversation is far from over.

I first wrote about this in 2021. Four years later, the names and platforms have changed — but the comments? Almost word for word the same.

When Priya Gopaldas selected Teddy Soares as one of her dates on Love Island, it reminded me of a pattern I’d already been tracking: the moment a Black and Asian couple appears in public, the script writes itself.

Trolls flooded social media with racist and sexist abuse when Priya Gopaldas went on a date with Teddy Soares — proving that in 2025, Black and Asian couples still face the same toxic stereotypes as years past.

Back then, Instagram trolls flooded timelines with “Kanjari” and “Kala” slurs. Today, on TikTok and IG, it’s “I bet her dad is proud” or “Future single mother”. The volume is the same — only the hashtags have changed.

This isn’t new. This is inherited prejudice finding new homes.

The Persistent Stereotype: Sex as the Only Story

Maintaining the idea that Black & Asian Relationships are only about sex serves one purpose: keeping them taboo. It paints South Asian women as incapable of making their own choices and Black men as little more than sexual objects.

I’ve written in Psychology Today about the historical and psychological roots of these stereotypes — and how they continue to mutate in modern media and dating culture.

In the Love Island example, Priya and Teddy’s date was… normal. A kiss on the cheek. A genuine conversation. Teddy even admitted he was interested in someone else. Yet the mere image of them together was enough for strangers to write their own sexualised version of events.

This is the same logic that fuels racist dating app patterns and colourist preferences.

The “Stay in Your Lane” Messaging

Across history, both Black and South Asian communities have been told — directly or indirectly — to marry “within the community.” Colonial powers reinforced it. Elders policed it. Media reproduced it.

Sometimes the warning comes in caricature — Blackface, minstrelsy, Bollywood tropes. Other times it’s in subtler forms: implying only someone from your own background could really understand you.

I’ve said this before, whenever our communities co-exist — from the Caribbean to South Africa to London — Black x Brown relationships are inevitable.

Why This Conversation Still Matters in 2025

Every time a Black and Asian couple trends on social media, we see the same comment threads. These aren’t just throwaway jokes — they’re reminders of how little we’ve moved past the colonial scripts we inherited.

By reducing our relationships to sex, people erase the shared histories, cultural overlaps, and political solidarities that actually exist between our communities.

The question for us now isn’t just how do we respond to these comments? — it’s how do we build enough visibility, memory, and mythos that these relationships are understood for their depth, not dismissed for their optics?

That’s why the BlindianProject exists. Not to ask for acceptance — but to reframe the story so that four years from now, we’re not still writing this same article.

Priya Gopaldas and Teddy Soares enjoyed a lighthearted Love Island date — but the scene sparked a wave of racist and sexist trolling, exposing deep-seated prejudice toward Black and Asian couples.

Jonah Batambuze is a, Ugandan-American interdisciplinary artist and founder of the BlindianProject, a global platform remixing Black x Brown identity through art, history, and storytelling. His work moves across installation, film, writing, and education—challenging systems of erasure while building new cultural blueprints.

Batambuze speaks and facilitates internationally on topics including Black South Asian solidarity, caste and colonial legacies, diasporic memory, and cultural resistance.

For speaking engagements, workshops, or media inquiries, contact: jonah@blindian-project.com or visit jonahbatambuze.com/speaking