6 Racist Things White Women Do to Black Women While Traveling
By: Kendall Tiarra
Tags: Black Travel, Travel, White Feminism, Black Women, Racism

6 Racist Things White Women Do to Black Women While Traveling Kendall Tiarra Follow Sep 17 · 6 min read

Black women existing beyond borders isn’t the first image depicted as the face of young, female travelers. And with the traveling community being so heavily white, aggressions of misogynoir- a combination of racism and sexism- go unrecognized. More specifically, racist actions enacted against Black women by white women are often unchecked and regularly go without being called out.

As an African-American woman, stares of curiosity and confusion from bewildered locals are second nature in my travels, and accounts of bigotry aren’t shocking in the slightest. What is shocking, however, is when racism comes from other travelers; and even more disappointingly, other women.

Despite being so open-minded and tolerant, many white travelers (and white women in this case) fail to acknowledge discrimination beyond getting charged $2 extra by street hagglers, or blondes getting whistled at in countries where lighter colored hair is not the norm. There is an extreme dissociation of the realities non-Caucasian women endure while traveling, and it results in us being gaslighted into believing our run-ins with racism and sexism are invalid.

Backpacking brown countries on a $4 a day budget does not make you immune to spreading Eurocentric rhetoric. If you by chance find yourself chatting away with a black woman you meet while abroad, here are a few ways you will probably be inherently racist and make us both uncomfortable.

1. Denying the Politics of Sexual Harassment

Men are catcalling you because they think you’re a sexually-liberated westerner looking for a good time. Men are catcalling me because they think I’m a prostitute. Both are demeaning and put us in potentially dangerous situations, but every unwarranted whistle comes with its own motive.

Traveling, especially alone, will always subject us to unwanted attention from men. However, when a high number of Black women are sex-trafficked and forced into prostitution globally, ignoring how the varying levels of sexual objectification are determinant by race and nationality is obtuse. Truthfully, choosing to deny the politics behind the sexual harassment of Black women, is in itself, a racist act that white women enact against Black women.

In countries where black people are a rarity, hold no political power, or aren’t socially integrated, the only purpose for a seemingly out of place black woman, in the eyes of ignorant locals, is selling sex.

Though still subjected to harassment, white women are able to roam the streets freely and be treated as a tourist first, not a poor migrant desperate for money. The perverted gazes upon a black woman’s skin leave her vulnerable and fetishized, and it’s both humiliating and completely justifiable in anti-black societies where the protection of brown bodies is not a priority.

2. Silencing the Experiences of Black Women

As tourists, our proximity to whiteness shelters us from some forms of discrimination, which in turn causes our incidents of misogynoir to be met with skepticism.

I was propositioned for sex by an old Spanish man who was convinced I was a sex worker from Nigeria, but the Dutch girl overhearing my story deemed it false because “it never happened to her black friends”. She then urged me to end the conversation because she refused to argue.

As if my encounter couldn’t possibly be real because her alleged black friends never informed her of gender-and-race-based harassment from senile white men. She, a white woman, the voice of authority for women everywhere, has never witnessed such a situation, therefore it must be made up.

One of the downfalls of mainstream feminism is that many white women avoid condemning the effects of white supremacy. This is because it paints them as perpetrators instead of victims, threatening their position on the social hierarchy invented by their white male counterparts.

Silencing, however, is a tool of oppression. Many white women’s choice to discredit rather than listen makes their bias against brown women transparent. It is another racist (albeit subconscious) act by white women that deserves to be called out.

3. Measuring Moral with Whiteness

My coworker once questioned why she, a college-aged white American woman, was bombarded with drug offers from street dealers in Portugal. She couldn’t grasp why they thought, “some white girl from Vermont” would want cocaine.

Her typecast of only brown people buying drugs was ironic, considering the rampant use of cocaine at stag parties, music festivals, and spring break holidays- functions that attract the white, young, and wealthy.

While I applaud her for unknowingly admitting to her own privilege as a white woman whose white womanhood averts harmful stereotypes, she illustrates how Black people are not equally scrutinized when whiteness defaults to virtue.

Though I sometimes wish I could easily assimilate into the degenerate white travel subculture of trespassing and throwing glass bottles into streets without fearing punishment, my melanin makes me guilty whether I commit a crime or not. I might be able to cry womanly tears to male authoritative figures depending on the day, but I will never have the advantage of namedropping my race in precedent to my gender to evade accountability.

4. Giving Unwarranted Travel Advice

Black football players endure monkey chants and are thrown bananas at by racist fans, and that’s why I’m afraid to attend a football game. Your detailed Europe itinerary fails to mention the increase of hate crimes against Black people and the rise of radical right populism. Airbnb is super cheap in Asia, but will they reject my reservation because I’m black?

Glossing over race-related issues, as white travelers tend to do, is the reason I must google “Is [insert country here] safe for black people?” before visiting a new country. Traveling as a black woman comes with its own challenges, meaning there is a 99 percent chance the patronizing white female perspective will serve no purpose other than where to dine on a Saturday night, if they even serve black people that is.

Traveling goes beyond eating new foods and visiting monuments. Making suggestions without taking into account the political atmosphere for foreigners, Black people, and basically anyone non-white is how white travelers continue to frame the narrative of locals while censoring the voices of the marginalized.

5. Excluding Black Women

Microaggressions transcend continents, and feelings of alienation exist in and outside of the hotel. Confined spaces such as guided tours and hostels, where cultures cannot easily segregate, do not completely resolve the racial divide amongst women.

One cold night at a busy bar in Poland, the fear of backlash over my blackness seemed momentarily non-existent. Drinking and laughing with a group of backpackers staying at my hostel, I suddenly found myself under interrogation by the Australian girl sitting across from me.

“Why are you here? Do you even stay at our hostel?”

Apparently, my English speaking in a room of Poles didn’t give me away as another tourist. Or how we had all eaten dinner together at the same table prior to going out.

Being no stranger to the ‘you don’t belong here’ stare, I could do nothing but brush off her sudden mistrust of me as the typical female cattiness I’ve suffered from white girls my entire life. But what about me in her presence made her so suspicious?

Being granted into spaces accessed predominantly by privileged whites demonstrates how social dynamics between whites and Blacks are as tensed abroad as they are back home.

How many Black women are you genuinely friends with? Despite being “colorblind”, you will most likely return home to socialize with those in your racial and socioeconomic groups, keeping interactions with those outside of it to a minimum.

Questioning why we’re existing near you is questioning why and how those of disadvantaged groups are afforded the same classist luxuries as you, like traveling.

6. Downplaying White Privilege

You shouldn’t feel obligated to compete in the Oppression Olympics, but if you must, please know you wouldn’t come close to winning.

Don’t try relating to me because we’re wearing the same drawstring elephant pants and staying at the same shitty hostel. Be happy your whiteness grants you opportunities to challenge the racist perceptions of your peers.

An intersectional ‘girl code’ may not be completely universal, but a bit of self-awareness and accountability for your covert racist actions can go a long way in promoting female solidarity. However, I have no desire to further the conversation if you believe gringa is a racial slur.

Originally published at https://sorellamag.org on September 17, 2020.