What I’m getting at is that these sorts of low-grade nuisances are what Black people are conditioned to “look forward to” instead of wanting to see and experience the world, which is often coupled with the myth that Black people have zero desire to travel. So given all these factors—my parents, my unstable financial status, and societal assumptions—I slowly became convinced that traveling wasn’t for us, meaning Black people. Obviously, I was wrong. Traveling is for everyone; it can just be made more difficult for Black people. That’s an understatement. It can be downright terrifying and life-threatening to travel while Black.
Green Book, the Oscar-winning film about interracial friendship, is based on the actual Green Book that was created in the 1930s. To be honest, I’ve never watched it, but I considered seeing the movie until at a press event, actor Viggo Mortensen sat beside costar Mahershala Ali and, as proof of the racial progress in America, Viggo barfed up, “For instance, no one says ‘nigger’ anymore.” And I was like . . . but you said it. Just now, so this is kinda awkward. Also, has he ever been to a Kendrick Lamar concert? There’s a whole lot of Scotts and Daves absolutely putting the stank on that word as they rap along to Kendrick. And finally, there are so many examples of racial progress that he could’ve chosen to make his raggedy-ass point. He could’ve mentioned the impressive gains Black students are making in graduating from high school and attending college. Shouting out Jackie Robinson for breaking the baseball color line barrier would have been a nice touch. He could have talked about how Black people don’t have to parkour in church shoes off the front bumpers of Oldsmobiles anymore in order to get away from police siccing rottweilers on them, thanks to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passing. Viggo had a plethora of options, but he went straight for “nigger.” With the hard “er.” Pass on him and this movie. But Green Book, the book? I’m in awe of its Black ingenuity.
In 1936, Victor Hugo Green, a Black postal worker, published the first edition of The Negro Motorist Green Book, which served as a guide for Black New York City dwellers to know which businesses they could patronize without suffering discrimination or abuse. Jim Crow was everywhere, not just in the South, so even certain parts of Harlem weren’t safe for Black people. Word traveled about the book, and its popularity grew. Eventually, Green became the Pitbull of his time. (Why don’t I teach American history at Howard University?) His book was so in demand that the following year, he released a national edition, thus kicking off a fifty-year-plus reign as the go-to—and, in some cases, lifesaving—resource that Blacks relied on for their everyday lives and especially when traveling throughout America. I mean, this book was a detailed catalog of Black-owned businesses around the country, ranging among hotels, restaurants, barbershops, gas stations, vacation hotspots, and more. At the guide’s peak, two million copies of it were in circulation. Just think of the bravery of Black people during this time. Yes, they risked their lives and their safety to do things like getting their hair done and filling up their gas tanks that would, today, fall under the category of “errands to run on a Saturday.” But what I marvel at the most is that in the face of the unbearableness of living in Jim Crow America, Black people still chose joy. They still chose to leave the confines of their neighborhoods to dig their toes in the sand at the beach, to take their kids to another state to try a different cuisine, to relax as every human being is entitled to. If you would have asked me any time before 2015 if I could be that bold, I’d respond “No.” But then my former manager emailed me about an unexpected job opportunity that came at the perfect time in my broke life: a two-day trip to Budapest to teach a group of thirty-five designers from a tech startup how to be fearless via sketch comedy and improv.
That sentence is, indeed, word salad, but I had spent the previous two months eating sad salads because I broke up with my ex and then spent almost all my money to move into another apartment. I was in no position to be choosy when it came to work, but I did have questions. Are there Black people in Budapest? What do they eat in Budapest? And seriously, though, where the Black people at in Budapest? All the questions ceased to matter when my former manager told me what the compensation was: flight, hotel, AND three thousand dollars, which was ten times more than I had ever been paid for a comedy gig up until that point. Admittedly, Budapest was never on my list of cities I dreamt of seeing, but it was unlike any place I’d been before, so basically, it was the same as going to Paris, Madrid, or Tokyo. #Uhhhhh #HadIEverLookedAtAMapBefore #OrSpunAGlobeInSocialStudiesClass #NowIUnderstandChristopherColumbus’sConfusionAndNavigationIssues #HeStillTrashTho.
The point is, for this unworldly gal, Budapest was practically Shangri-la and I had to go there, except I didn’t have a passport. I quickly put the cost of an expedited one on my credit card, and when I finally got my passport, I glowed like I had Fenty Beauty highlighter tattooed on my cheekbones, temples, forehead, nose, and chin. Just luminous from every angle because never again would I utter the sentence “I don’t have a passport.” Everything about the passport thrilled me. The slightly raised ridges and embossed gold lettering on the cover. The picture of my half-smiling face. The pages of the passport practically begging me to replace its brand-new smell and crease-free form with a slight odor, smudged ink, and wrinkles as signs of well-earned wear and tear. The idea that I could now become worldly. But it wasn’t just the passport that I loved. I found each aspect of the trip pleasurable.
The mediocre airplane food on Air Berlin received a chef’s kiss from me. When I arrived at customs to declare my reason for being in Budapest, I proudly declared, “I’m here on business! Teaching improv to a bunch of dudes in tech.” Turns out the phrase “teaching improv” is not the icebreaker you’d think it’d be in eastern Europe. But there were so many victories along the way that made up for the occasional misstep. Walking along the Chain Bridge, which spans the Danube. Silently taking in centuries of art at the Museum of Fine Arts. At night, hanging with a couple of newfound and temporary friends as we stumbled upon a found bar aka an abandoned building that was transformed into a bar, but not in a gentrification way. A banged-up claw-foot tub functioning as a place to sit. Graffiti on the walls of a stairwell that wouldn’t feel out of place in the background of an influencer’s selfie. Karaoke blasting from multiple rooms. Hungarian words flying everywhere. I savored every second of this sensory overload. But nothing compared to the quiet hour or two I spent one afternoon sitting in a little café, eating pastries as I people watched. In the stillness, I didn’t even care that after manager fees and taxes, I wasn’t going to net much money. I had traveled. Internationally. For the first time. By myself, and it was amazing. I didn’t know how I was ever going to travel again, but logistics and lack of money were no concerns of mine. I was far too entranced by the Budapest of it all.
Now, I recognize that I could’ve been heavily romanticizing my time there. But I swear it was so innocent and pleasant that any reservations I had about traveling abroad solo as a Black woman, while never fully gone, receded to the background long enough for me to feel safe. So because of that, my self-defeating belief that traveling was just not meant for me or other Black people was replaced by something more hopeful. Still, I’m Black. Meaning that when it came to traveling, I was somewhere between feeling the one extreme of blind optimism and the other of grizzled cynicism.
Since the publication of the final issue of the Green Book (1966–67), it has gotten easier and less dangerous for Black people to travel, although given the social uprisings of 2020, the L.A. riots of the ’90s, and more, that is debatable. Too many Black lives have been extinguished for us to pretend that the ugliness of the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s is firmly in the past. However, there’s no denying progress has been made. The fact that a modern-day Green Book is not a necessity to travel is cause for celebration; however, leaving home for vacation or mundane purposes can be a roll of the dice, as Rhonda Colvin chronicled in her 2018 Washington Post article “Traveling While Black,” noting everyth
ing from disproportionate traffic stops, tickets, and car searches, to first-ever travel advisories from the NAACP.
And as we have seen so frequently in the last few decades, years, and months, discrimination against Black people knows no bounds. Being carefree while Black is not widely accepted. Eleven Black women in the book club Sistahs on the Reading Edge were reminded of this when they were kicked off the Napa Valley Wine Train for laughing and being too “boisterous.” First of all, let’s pause and give these women their flowers for having a Black-ass group name. This is the kind of name that lets you know they’re “Before I Let Go” purists and will only rock out to the original Frankie Beverly and Maze version. Secondly, it’s a wine train, not a “sip lukewarm water and snack on dry-ass pretzel sticks while sitting on your Wayfair couch” train. Every car on a wine train, at the bare minimum, should be noisy and messy like Studio 54 in its heyday: people loudly having a good time, sequins everywhere, and a nipple slip from Grace Jones.
Okay, okay. Look, I understand that people being loud in a public setting can be irritating. However, in a world that wants to embarrass, shame, or criminalize Black women for not operating within the confines of stereotypes—jezebel or strong/angry—I find it deliciously defiant and, more important, necessary for Black women to show public displays of happiness. Not only to normalize it for the outside world, but to remind themselves that they are entitled to feel and express the totality of their humanity, which includes joy. Unfortunately, the group, which included an eighty-three-year-old woman, were rudely confronted by staff for laughing too loudly and then escorted off the Napa Valley Wine Train by police. This resulted in two of the ladies losing their jobs. Eventually, Sistahs on the Reading Edge sued for $11 million in damages, and even though they settled for an undisclosed amount, I think it’s clear there isn’t enough money in the world to make up for instilling fear in Black people and escalating a situation, which so often results in murder at the hands or gun of a cop.
I’ve never experienced anything as debasing as being arrested for being Black, but more times than I care to count, I’ve been made to feel like a National Geographic subject if styled by Shopbop. Every time I’ve visited my boyfriend’s sleepy hometown of Bournemouth, which is on the south coast of England, I am the only Black person there. And because I like to wear giant braids and bold makeup, I’m highly visible. Some would stare. Others would compliment me, which, don’t get me wrong, is nice, but, ultimately, feeling eyes on you and being watched by white people, even if the outcome is a positive interaction, is draining. Knowing that I am under a microscope puts me on edge, thus making it difficult to relax and feel comfortable in my own skin. Instead, I’m hyperaware that I am the Outsider and alternate between feeling rebellious and trying to make myself small.
When I am not concerned with being watched in Bae’s hometown, I am sometimes confronted by the ways people of color can be pushed to the margins, and disheartened by racially insensitive things that are glaring to me yet don’t register as even a blip to others. Such as when I’m at a nice dinner in a fancy hotel and the only other POC present are the employees. Or when I’m visiting a person’s home or a museum and see a casual or outright racist figurine that, because it’s been a part of the culture for centuries, is deemed okay. Or like in 2019, when walking in an outdoor market, I clocked, out of my periphery, an older gentleman staring at me. He caught me on a day when I was feeling particularly audacious, so I locked eyes with him as if to ask him what his problem was. He apologized and followed up with a “Can I take a picture of you?” My mood shifted a little as I thought, Oh, okay! I may be thirty-five, but clearly, it’s never too late to be discovered and start a modeling career. He continued, “I want to show my wife.” Woooooooow! Pretty bold move, but I guess my Diane-Keaton-if-she-attended-Thotchella look aka cream-colored linen clothing that covered most of my body, is the oat milk that brings all the boys (and maybe some wives) to the yard. And then he finished his statement, “We’ve never seen a Black person before.” Record scratch! GOOGLE IMAGES? RIHANNA’S INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT? A HYPE WILLIAMS MUSIC VIDEO FROM THE NINETIES?
Look, I understand the curiosity and desire to memorialize the moment of being relatively up close and personal with a Black person, especially if it’s your first time, but no. Do you know how many things I’ve seen for the first time that I didn’t take a picture of? A woman whipping out her toddler’s penis so he could pee on the sidewalk at high noon. A man admitting I was right in a staff meeting. Myself when I texted someone “I’m on my way,” and I was actually on my way and not still in bed, unshowered, with my sleeping cap on and crust in my eyes. I mean, get a grip and act like you’ve been here before. Act like you’ve seen a beautiful Black person before. If you haven’t guessed by now, I wouldn’t let the stranger take the picture, and he was disappointed.
Looking back on it, I could have asked him why he wanted a picture. His answer could’ve been harmless or perhaps it would have turned into a situation where I’d have to do emotional labor and be the “Black experience” that he’d run home and discuss with loved ones and friends. And I just couldn’t take that risk because, on that day, I just wanted to be a girl who was shopping with her boyfriend. I didn’t want to stand out from the crowd, feel exoticized, or be a character in someone’s mini awakening about Blackness. I just wanted to be unremarkable in every conceivable way, which is something, I’ve discovered, I desire most when I’m at the airport.
I follow every rule in hopes of drawing as little attention to myself as possible, as if that will prevent people noticing I’m Black or judging me for being Black. Well, it doesn’t matter how much I try to render myself invisible, I’m still harassed. Like the time I was pulled out of line because one airport employee couldn’t believe that I could afford business class. Once I showed him my boarding pass and ID, he let me back in line, and not even a minute later, another airport employee ran in my direction, questioning why I was in the line. Of course, everyone watched me be humiliated as they each tried to justify their assumption that I didn’t belong. Another time, I, along with my coworkers, who are all white, approached the gate to board our flight. I was first and greeted the gate agent, then handed him my boarding pass. He announced loudly and rudely, “I’m sorry, we’re only boarding business class right now, so if you want to wait your turn . . .” Oh, so you think that because I didn’t have the strenf to cover up my hyperpigmentation this morning that I’m going to let you loud-talk me like that? Bruh, Black women invented loud talking. #KnowYourRoots #HenryLouisGatesJr.
Seriously, Black women know when a person is trying to be messy, so we match their energy by pointedly increasing our volume, thus turning the tables on them, so they can now be the ones who are embarrassed. Which is why when the old white couple in front of me turned around to see how I was going to react, I blew my invisible harmonica in the key of “I Got Time Today” and let out an “I am in business class, so I don’t need to wait my turn, but it’s good to know that you don’t think I can afford business class. Well, I can and I did. So listen to your scanner hit my boarding pass with a confirmation beep. Beep.” Y’all, I ain’t never been on key a day in my life, but in that moment, I was harmonizing like a member of En Vogue. The gate agent stuttered, trying to get out an apology as I walked away. It was nice to give him a taste of his own medicine and yet . . . it wasn’t enough to mask the demoralized feelings that lingered.
There have been moments when I wondered if traveling is worth it. Is it worth the headache or the energy of having to defend myself? Is it worth being on my best behavior at all times when I know it’s still not enough to prevent someone exercising what they believe is their inalienable right to publicly shame me for existing? Is it worth the frustration of knowing I am being watched from afar, so that I can never entirely and fully feel comfortable? Well, yes, because I believe the tide is changing. The ignorant assumption that Black people don’t or shouldn’t travel and the endless atte
mpts over decades and decades to make us feel unwelcome are simply not working. We don’t feel defeated and we’re not staying home. We continue loading up our Away suitcases and embarking on new adventures as writer Eugene Yiga notes in his 2019 CNN.com article, “How the Black Travel Movement Is Gaining Momentum.”
Like most things when it comes to Black people, the tourism industry refuses to reflect reality and catch up to the changing times since the publication of The Negro Motorist Green Book. It’s clear we’re either an afterthought or flat-out ignored by the powers that be in tourism. Even as recently as a decade ago, I would be hard-pressed to find an online ad, subway billboard, or travel website that wasn’t littered with smiling white faces, which is mind-boggling when you consider the following: There are nearly five million Black millennial travelers in the United States, and as a group, we spent $63 billion on travel in 2018 (up from $48 billion in 2011). Wow. Given those numbers, one would assume we’d be included in tourism ads. Unfortunately, quite the opposite is happening. The website Travel Noire, which caters to the Black travel experience, reports that less than 3 percent of travel advertisements focus on Black people. Da hell, Sandals, Travelocity, and Expedia?! We’ve been pumping all this money into tourism, and you companies can’t put several Black queens and kings in all their shea butter glory in your ads? Not one spoken-word poet / doula / DJ in your commercials? Well, as Black people, we have demonstrated time and time again that we can be shut out, disrespected, and disregarded, but our dogged determination proves that nothing will stop any of our revolutions, such as the Black revolution, the Black hair revolution, and yes, our travel revolution. And I’m proud to be a part of this movement.
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