If you have been following my blog for a while now, then you know that I have been highlighting women like myself on here who have similar lived experiences abroad. People often want to know what I think about their country, and what it’s like for me as a Black women living overseas full-time.

For me, it often feels like time traveling to be honest. It makes me reflect a lot on the progress people of my background have made in my country in terms of visibility, because other people who reflect what I look like overseas often are hidden, unseen, or overlooked and seemingly invisible.

This has been the case for my experiences in Central America and in South and Southeast Asia.

It’s not that there are not people who look like me, but they tend to be unnoticed by society in general. There is separation of class and race that doesn’t go unnoticed in my travels, in every region of the world. I actively have to seek out people like myself who tend to be within marginalized communities.

This can create issues for me, being so visible. People can look like they admire me and at the same time completely ignore the people who reflect who I am and what I look like in their communities.

As is well known, India has a caste system, and although it didn’t affect my personal experiences there, it did affect the professional and social interactions I encountered on a daily basis there.

I also had similar experiences in the UAE, when flying with Qatar Airways to Mumbai I noticed that the flight attendants who looked like myself were only positioned in the back of the aircraft.

This has been consistent to my experiences abroad, outside of the Caribbean and the continent of Africa. So when I’m overseas I’m looked at as this novelty, separated by my passport privileges.

I get stared at a lot, sometimes gawked at, in astonishment that I exist so freely in society.

This is the experiences of many of my friends who also live internationally in racially divided places. One of my friends noted to me that she as a darker toned woman receives look of disgust by people who are living in the most impoverished areas of South Asia, and this is truly not surprising considering the way darker toned people are treated and consistently erased in this region.

Many black women have to consider even their own safety when traveling to different countries to decide if it is safe for us to travel alone there.

Plenty of stories have come out of Black women going missing, being kidnapped, or being harassed.

So, how do I feel as a Black women overseas?

Mostly, like the character Elphaba in Wicked. I know the power I hold within my American passport, such as being able to alert my embassy of emergencies overseas, but I know to weld it carefully, because at any moment I can become a victim or a villain. I know it can only take me so far because I will be judged by the skin I have, for better or worse, before my character.

People love to believe USA is a monolith.

The race conversation starts and ends in the USA.

This is not true, and never has been actually.

It’s just the USA happens to be the only part of the world where this conversation is blatantly addressed by the people who live within it.

It is something unavoidable in our everyday lives and interactions because we are not homogeneous in appearance, so we must address it accordingly.

We live in a melting pot of cultures, religions, socioeconomic backgrounds, and languages.

This environment makes it nearly impossible to ignore racism in the biggest cities of the USA.

So while visiting other countries I feel like I’m time traveling, because these issues aren’t socially addressed by the communities I live in abroad.

They certainly do exist however, and I recognize that we are all more alike than we are different.

These are my thoughts on life abroad as a Black woman, and I still recommend that we all travel !

I believe the more we show up in spaces without asking for permission, the more we will be respected and supported in larger society.

Thanks for reading with me until the end!

Until the next adventure,