What’s so important about black, women travelers you might ask?
For starters, recent years have seen a lot more of them, either bloggers, journalists, YouTubers or Instagrammers. Irrespective of their identity there’s plenty who are simply good at what they do, covering the whole range of travel styles, from back packing to luxury. Many are westerners but Africans are also adding their own insights into the subject. There’s simply no reason to imagine that what they’ve got to say is any less relevant to you than any other traveler, whatever your skin colour.
However, there’s a more important issue:- their experiences can differ wildly from white and particularly white, male travelers. Even before we get on to the subject of travel we need to ask ourselves, how much do we actually understand the experience of black women in our own countries? Do you have any close, black friends? How often have you had an in depth conversation with a black person about their experiences? Even if your answer to these questions is negative, black women do at least have some opportunity to express themselves in our media, so you ought to have some inkling of how their lives may be different from your own. Simply as the kind of person who is reading this blog the subject of racism should hardly be a complete mystery to you.
Good advice for the traveling lady
If we are honest with ourselves, for most of us our appreciation of the daily reality of black women in our own societies is probably a Swiss cheese of an understanding at best and an out of focus one of that. While having an understanding of our fellow citizens of different identities is a worthy and I would say obligatory part of life in itself, it is of value to us travelers in another way.
So, bearing in mind your probably, relatively fragile grasp of the black, female experience, despite many years of opportunities for interaction and learning, consider what you can learn about a country from a few weeks or even a few months traveling in a foreign country, especially when you might have a limited grasp of the language. At best you are getting a handful of jigsaw pieces spread randomly over a blank canvas with little idea of how any of them may fit together. How can we hope to gaIn an understanding of the people in places we visit when we haven’t even done the same thing at home among people with whom we share a language and culture?
Once we begin to grasp the idea that other travelers, who we may well feel we have a lot in common with, are having, often radically different experiences, we can then put the disparate jigsaw pieces of our own experiences into some kind of context, not driven by preconceptions, to come to a better understanding of other cultures.
Carnival in Jamaica certainly attracted more black westerners than anywhere else I’ve been
A good a place to start is where this understanding did for me, with the ever eloquent, Namibian journalist Martha Mukaiwa and her 2014 piece Travelling while African. The title alone leads us down a path of differing identities and experience. #travelingwhileblack, with or without the hashtag, has become a common refrain in recent years but black and African can be very different things. Africans tend not to take black as their primary identity because they generally have too few white people to be in contrast with. Just as us white people have had little reason to understand the concept of our whiteness in predominantly white populations – something we really need to start doing if we are are going to truly get to grips with enduring problems in race relations. Martha relates both positive and negative encounters by virtue of being African but being black and a woman each offer their own characteristic experiences. It is the intersection of all three identities that determine the overall experience.
No doubt all women travelers, regrdless of colour will be able to relate particular negative experiences solely related to womanhood: unwanted sexual advances; vulnerability traveling alone and the like. For black women the issues can go beyond the more obvious factors of racism. Many will encounter the eroticisation of black womanhood which often is associated with prostitution. You don’t even have to leave Europe for this kind of problem, as Fli recounts in preparing for a trip to Rome. As she had heard from others who had been presumed to be prostitutes she very deliberately overplayed the tourist act, with a camera around her neck and a map in hand. Nigerian traveler Zainob also talks about the importance of having to research and plan her trips to be aware of local attitudes towards Africans, at times deciding some destinations are not worth the hassle of going.
There’s one word that keeps appearing in black women’s experiences of life, which is “tired”. Not just tired of racism, which should come as no surprise, but the constsnt drip drip of what some call microaggressions. These ignorant statements, questions and actions, often from the well intentioned and those who wouldn’t think of themselves as racist, might be overlooked in isolation, but it’s the cumulative effect of microaggressions that become so wearing, as Nneka explains in her Afros y Paela blog. People often make baseless assumptions purely by virtue of being black: you shouldn’t be in first class; you’re a refugee or a criminal; you’re somehow representative of all black people. The number one issue however, has to be hair, so let me spell it out for you, FOR GOD’S SAKE DON’T TOUCH HER FUCKING HAIR! Yes. I know afro hair is fascinating and we can’t do all those amazing styles with the thin, whispy stuff blowing around on our heads but that doesn’t give you a right to touch, tug or offer your boundless wisdom on how to care for it. To avoid embarrasing yourself just watch this video – Things not to say to someone with Afro hair
I doubt if there’s a single black, woman traveler who can’t tell a tale of someone taking liberties with her hair and not just from foreigners but other travelers and airport security as well. Hair in Africa has always been bound up with culture, often expressing identity, status, age, marriageability and more. The era of slavery added a new layer of cultural expression to hair and these values endure today, expressing themselves in new and different forms: its not just some stuff that happens to be on her head.
Some experiences can parallel our own: I’ve had curious locals stare, touch me and take photos without asking but that’s not to say they’re objectively the same for all of us. I might, on occasion even be quite grateful for having a strange lady stroking my thigh but it would be foolish to suggest that a lone black woman receiving the same attention from a man at the back of a bus should take such a thing so lightly. Different women will inevitably have different responses. Take Haitian traveller Krystel in this interview who doesn’t get overly perturbed by some microagressions and has developed enough coping strategies for dealing with at least some forms of sexual harassment. Others have strategies for dealing with being stared at. The fact that women have to have coping strategies is enough of an indication that these unpleasant experiences are all too common. As a white man having to fend off unwanted sexual advances generally involves little more than having to say, “no thanks”, and keeping walking, without having any potential threat hanging over me.
Fancy a change from being surrounded by white people? Try Liberia
Of course it’s not all bad experiences traveling as a black woman, after all, more and more would not be doing it if it were so. All the women I have linked to here are a testament to that and some will actively celebrate the fact. For black westerners, going to predominantly black nations can offer a refreshing change of atmosphere of, “not being surrounded by whiteness”, where black people have a strong connection to their particular history as Kaitlyn recounts in her trip to Anguilla. Krystel talks of going back to the motherland and it’s this kind of search for identity that has boosted the interest in African heritage tours and prompted Ghana’s Year of Return in 2019, inviting the African diaspora to return to their roots. One of the great tragedies of slavery was how it wrenched millions from their culture and suppressed it for so long, leaving a crisis of identity. Having an immigrant family history, where ancestors left in search of a better life lacks the brutal cut off point in slavery, so going back to your roots can be a profoundly different experience.
As fellow travelers it is our duty to listen to and respect these women’s experiences and learn from what they say. Renee Cherez who has written a number of great articles about traveling while black, discusses how white travellers have often said she was “exaggerating, looking for trouble, or craving attention”, in response to her negative experiences. To diminish these issues is insulting and we should not deny that whiteness gives us privileges not afforded to everyone.
This brief article can only touch on the variety of experiences so please check out some of the links in this article or below and remember the next time you step onto foreign soil that there is so much you don’t know. True wisdom can only start with knowing what you are ignorant of.
Five things to expect when traveling while black
Traveling while black in Colombia
What does it mean to be a black traveller
5 outrageous things that have happened to me as a black traveler
Traveling while brown through Trump’s America
