I blame Pete Doherty, but then again I blame him for pretty much everything that's wrong with popular culture these days. It's his sickly pallor, the tightness of his jeans but, most of all, the popularity of his music. Ever since Doherty - in his bands the Libertines and now Babyshambles - and his army of imitators stumbled into the public consciousness, there has been an unforeseen casualty, and that casualty is the black British music scene.

Take a look at the top 10 albums. At the time of writing, they are all white. Top five? Kaiser Chiefs, the Editors, Hard-Fi, the Strokes and James Blunt. All white, all male and all, with the exception of the Strokes, British. The singles chart isn't much better. The only black Brits in the top 20 are Simon Webbe (number 19) and Sugababes (number 11) - and one of the Babes is white. While these two acts are to be praised for even gracing the charts in such lean times, it's not saying much when in the same chart there is an animated JCB at number two and X Factor winner Shayne Ward doing his poor man's Timberlake at number one.

Give or take the occasional pop act or reality TV reject (Lemar), there is very little British black music to be found. Even Javine Hilton, deemed the talent of Popstars: The Rivals (which spawned Girls Aloud), is reduced to appearing in the forthcoming Boney M musical alongside Harvey from So Solid Crew. The charts used to be full of black British music, be it pop, garage, whatever. Now it's vanished.

Where's Jamelia? What happened to Ms Dynamite's second album? Do So Solid exist any more? And what about Beverley Knight, Mis-teeq, Craig David? In fact, things seem so bad these days that if you're black, British and want to be in the charts, you have to front an indie band (see Bloc Party). Not since the mid-90s Britpop era has indie music so dominated the charts. Suddenly it's all about skinny white guys and their guitars again.

Before I go further, I should probably confess my allegiances: I'm not, nor have I ever been, a fan of indie music. It does not speak to me, it does not excite me; in fact, it leaves me cold. I spent much of my teens in a musical wilderness. It was Manchester, it was the late 80s and early 90s, and the whole city, if not the whole country, was busy getting their lank hair in a twist over the Stone Roses, the Inspiral Carpets and co. My friends in my largely white, fairly middle-class school wasted countless hours trying to convince me the Happy Mondays were "really a soul band" because of all their black influences. I, however, was into Soul II Soul, Mica Paris and M People. I had two choices: get into indie music or ride it out. I chose the latter.

I've often wondered why indie music never grabbed me. I'm black, but I grew up in a white family (I was adopted) in a white neighbourhood and went to a white school. If indie was going to speak to any black person, surely it would be me. And it's not as if I didn't try. I'd go to clubs with my schoolmates and attempt to drink snakebite, but I felt hideously out of place. It wasn't just that I was the only black person in the room, I was usually also overdressed - smiley T-shirts never being my "thing".

Indie bands didn't look like me, didn't dress like me and always seemed to be so darned depressed. Even in the midst of my adolescence, I liked my music up.

But this new indie revival is all-pervasive. From skinny jeans and waistcoats on the catwalk to it suddenly being cool to drink cider. In the recent menswear shows, it was all about drainpipes and a passion for pale skin. Hedi Slimane for Dior Homme is obsessed with the Pete Doherty skinny-white-rock-boy look - a style that apparently will still be in vogue next winter.

And take a look at this year's Brit award nominees. Anyone planning to tune into the televised awards show on February 15 should probably don sunglasses, so dazzlingly white is the list of nominees. Leeds lads Kaiser Chiefs and ex-army boy James Blunt both have five nominations (British group, album, live act, rock act and British breakthrough for Kaiser Chiefs; and British male solo artist, album, pop act, breakthrough act and British single for Blunt). Also featured are the likes of Franz Ferdinand, Kasabian and indie granddaddy Ian Brown. There are no black women in the British female solo artist category, and no black Brits up for British group, album, rock (as if), live act or even best pop act.

In fact, were it not for Sugababes' wonderfully commercial Push The Button (although their credibility was somewhat damaged by the speed with which they replaced founder member Mutya) in the best British single category and the ghetto that is the Urban Act category, there would not be a single black British artist nominated for an award. Not one. And this in a year when Tony Christie and Peter Kay are up for British single.

You could argue that this says more about the Brits awards committee than anything else. But, coupled with the lack of British black music in the charts and the overexcitement caused by bands such as Arctic Monkeys and Kaiser Chiefs, it's indicative of much more than that. The problem lies at the heart of the record industry. Its interest in black British music is seldom genuine; it wanes quickly and it is always ready to move on to the next big thing. The suits, and the money they bring with them, never stick around long enough to nurture black British talent, which means black British music has no solid foundations. Hence its ability seemingly to disappear.

Few record company executives (predominantly white middle-class men) understand the current black British underground scene. Even though they might see the financial potential of a new signing, they don't necessarily know what to do with them. "Black artists are the first to go if there is a problem," says Kwaku, of the Black Music Congress, a non-profit organisation which is holding a debate next Saturday at London's City University entitled Should British Black Music Shut Up Shop?, "so many of them are dropped after the first album, the first single even. There is no development, and it is not because there is no talent. There is a lot of talent, but there needs to be sustainability."

Yes, there has been the relative success of Dizzee Rascal, Estelle and, more recently, Kano and Sway, but even they haven't truly hit the big time.

"Kids are doing music on estates, on the street, in their bedrooms, but they are not being taken seriously," says Estelle. "There is not enough faith in black music at a high level. Record company executives, labels and artists are not taking the time to go and see what kids are producing. They don't go to the estates, they don't have that much of a clue."

And when the major labels do sign black British artists, they don't always get it right, or they end up signing acts that either aren't good enough or aren't ready. Or they sign underground white acts such as the Streets or Lady Sovereign, which would be fine if they signed plenty of black artists, too. "They get excited and complacent at the same time, so they think we are all the same," says Estelle. "They lump us all together. I am a black British female artist, so I must be like Ms Dynamite, I must be like Shystie, I must be like Jamelia, but we're all different."

The last boom for black British music was when the UK garage scene exploded at the turn of the millennium. But it didn't make enough money quickly enough, so the A&R men went elsewhere. They went back to what was familiar to them, to the music that reminded them of their youth, the stuff they knew how to sell, their spiritual home: indie music. So, too, have the hordes of white, male, middle-class music journalists, the radio station bosses and, well, pretty much everyone else. You can practically hear their relief to be back on home turf with every breathless Doherty feature.

And then, of course, there is the download factor. The same technology that has spawned a thousand mix tapes also means people have stopped buying music in the quantities they used to. In these download-friendly times, indie fans are the best kind to have. They buy records, they show up at grotty pubs and they pay extortionate amounts to wade in mud to see their bands play at festivals.

"Indie kids want to own their music: they go to gigs and festivals," says Shabs Jobanputra, MD at Relentless Records, which has sold over three million records, including So Solid Crew's Brit award-winning 21 Seconds and Artful Dodger's first release, Re-Rewind. "Urban consumers don't go to festivals; it's not about living on a housing estate in Clapton and going to Glastonbury. Touring doesn't have the same value in black music."

I've been to Glastonbury, but I didn't pay for my ticket and I stayed in a hotel. Even then I found it a trying experience. My friend had to keep telling me to shut up when I kept wondering out loud why people paid for this experience. It also reminded me too much of my youth. All those drunken white people jumping up and down in the rain and listening to guitar music was a little too like Madchester.

But indie music's tradition of festivals, gigging and the loyalty it creates means it hasn't been hit as hard by downloading and file-sharing. Meanwhile, black music fans' objection to acts selling out - once an underground track or artist goes mainstream, they lose their credibility and a large part of their fan base - leaves it wide open, with nothing to keep it going in these lean times.

So what is the future for black British music? Investing and nurturing talent, instead of just dropping it, would make a huge difference. So, too, would developing more of a live scene. BBC radio's 1Xtra and digital TV's Channel U are a good start. It's about ensuring the foundations are there so that when black British music is back in the limelight, it stays there.

"We have to believe this country is big enough to sustain more than one style of music at a time," Estelle says. By which I think she means: I'll listen to yours if you listen to mine. In the meantime, I'll be wearing my skinny jeans and digging out my old Soul II Soul T-shirt.