From wiki,
The Independent newspaper columnist David Lister criticizes the MOBO awards, writing: "I find any notion of separate awards devised for black musicians, and still largely for black musicians, depressing". He went on to say[5] that such awards "limit the music and the performers they claim to honour" and "manage to be both ludicrous and dangerously divisive at the same time." Others[6] reject this criticism, calling it "pedant", and noting that MOBO simply focuses on genres just as other awards focus on other genres.
Critic Niall Crowley highlights the inherent inaccuracies in the term "black music", for example noting the significant Jewish influences on rhythm and blues and rock n roll. He states: "Without these and many other non-African Americans who played a defining role in the evolution of rhythm and blues, we wouldn’t have much of the great 'black' music we've had over the past 50 years or so." Crowley also juxtaposes the attitudes of the MOBOs with the huge success of black performers in recent decades, writing that the awards reinforce "the idea that today’s black performers are simply the latest generation of sufferers in a long history of victimhood." He argues that in reality "no one could possibly claim that recent generations of black performers have suffered at the hands of a racist music industry" and the MOBOs "encourage music fans to see discrimination and racism where there is none,[7]