Monday, June 06, 2005

Traveling while Black. . .Race Matters

I was asked some years ago, what is it like travel abroad.....while black? At first, I found the question to be ridicilous and racist. But lately, I found myself asking that very same question. I have noticied a few things when dealing with other American travelers, particuarly white americans. This is not to say, that racism is only unique to America, however, I encounter more of the classical american racism both at home and abroad. However, while encountering Europeans or anyone else in the world, I find myself indulging in dialogues, which are usually amicables, heart-warming and welcoming. I don´t get that same feeling from my white american patriots. I pray that one day this will change.

Los Viajeros

Even with these difficulities, this does not hinder my relationship with Nathan and with Attila. We are best friends and travelmates. We help each other out, we try to be honest about our feelings, we watch each other´s back and we do as much as we can to deal with the struggles while being abroad. With this in mind, as far as I being black and they being white, the idea really doesn´t have any weight on our friendship, in many ways, we agree on the same issues in regards to race and equality. However, this is not always the case with other fellow white american travelers. I am usually confronted with questions of how I was able to make it out of the states (as though, I escaped from prision), or what type of program helped me to get to travel (International version of Affirmative Action.) At times, our friendship is not really valued by these inividuals and they try to provide white privileges to my travelmates with hospitality, friendship, sex, romance and such daring positions as get away from their older black travelmate. When I am in this situation, I someties ask myself, "where are other black travelers in the world?" I never been a person that really cared about the race of a person, but it sucks that others take that really to heart.

About several months ago, I was hanging out with Attila and Nathan and other travelers from NewZealand, we were talking about who-knows-what. And there was a guy sitting among us, let´s call him Jim. Jim was about 44 years old, white and he was from Texas. He seemed like a nice guy, but I noticied how he spoke to my best friends. As soon as he learned that I was traveling with them, he seemed to change his vernacular or better yet, he talked more as though he was from the black inner city. "Hey man! yo, yo, wat´s up, what´s going on, or going down" there were so many words being used. The first word in response to his black choice vernacular was "Hi!" I tried to give him a chance and it was taxing doing so. Jim, for some strange reason wanted to ask me questions of what I think of Europe, Spain, political, and cultural perspectives on these issues. I told him that I enjoyed the cultural enrichness and diversity and so on. Jim, was searching for the Americana culture in Spain. He asked me if I felt more at home with the Spanish than with the Americans? I told him, "yes, I feel at home with the Spanish, considering that I am a guest in their country." Jim tried to limit my cultural exprience that evening, as I was trying to enjoy watching spanish women dancing Flamenco.

Bailar Flamenco!Jim, wanted to establish that I was outside of my norm and that I needed to return to the good Ol´United States, where he and I would probably not cross paths both in social and work life.

The "Race matters" even get worse with American white females. There is no doubt that my friends may have a certain look, which most american females search while traveling abroad, but yet at the same time, these same american white females will ignore my friends if they were walking down the street in any city in United States. However, these young, white college girls who were able to get some money, sorry, a lot of money from their parents to exprience different cultures in Europe, somehow have abandonded all their diversity courses and cultural classes to only find other white people who speak the same language, wear the same clothes, come from the same area or region and watch the same television shows; so they think! Though, my friends don´t even watch these shows or even wear the same clothes or really care for what these american females are looking for. In any case, my friends are white and somehow these white american females have all of sudden decided to consider themselves my friends as their best friends, by natural selection. I am usually taken as "that´s cool, your friend, the black guy" or "okay!" or even more overt comments such as "that guy? well.... he doesn´t act black!" And suddenly, I remind them of some other black guy and there is a possibility according them, that I even know that other black guy. Or somehow I have become an expert in dancing, singing, and even an interpretuer of black literature and also I am hiding the infamous book which has all the information and names of every black person in the world. And since, I failed to provide them of entertainment or I have disappointed them by not giving them what they expected from me, all of sudden, I am the invisible.

A solo hike with a timed shotWhere do we go from here? When we see each other, my american travelers, let´s understand that we are both caught in the same place, we will be asked about our current government, our state of mind and everything about America. These curious people, which we will meet, don´t really care if you are white or that I am black, to them, we talk the same, act the same and we somehow support George W. Bush and his policies, is that fair? I am traveling to exprience new cultures, not to exprience the American racial problems. So, let´s be friends, share stories and adventures. . . .

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello guys!

Thanks for sharing this experience with the rest of the world.
one day I hope to be doing my R T W trip. now I can because I N S is taking some time with my file, but I'am leaving ^.^

about Sidney's post, it is indeed a shame that close minds, can't look wider to the whole picture that they are exposed while traveling.
Friendship is one of the purest relationships.

Take care guys, I'll be reading you often

wish you the best on your way!

Carolina

macon d said...

As I said over on my blog where you left a link to this post, thank you for sharing these revelations. It's awful that you aren't allowed to forget your race like white people are. On the other hand, white people SHOULDN'T forget the significance of their own racial membership, nor those of non-white people. Thank you for increasing racial awareness with this post!

That white women traveling abroad see you as less American than other, white American travelers is, simply, rank racism. I'm sure, though, that they'd never accept the label of "racist" for themselves.

thelastlemming said...

For the record, I am black.

First of all, Dude you use the word 'however' way too much. There are other subordinating conjunctions and transitional words in the English language.

Nice blog post though, informative.

On the race while traveling issue, that's how it is. The other half of the race thing while traveling is due to the stereotypes that black people perpetuate in the U.S. Black people are the problem also. Maybe not in Sweden, Netherlands or where ever you are from but American Blacks are unique from other black people.

People associate anger, violence, hip-hop, rap, bitches, hoes, ghettos, and "thugism" with Black Americans (a.k.a African-Americans).

So those stereotypes that you deal with are products of black Americans. It is improving though.