How to Identify Anti-Blackness Abroad (and How to React)

Traveling offers the unique opportunity to make the world feel smaller and more interconnected, even through vast differences. Culture, tradition, language, and food all offer insights into how people live around the world. What can often be forgotten is asking “why?” Why do people live the way they do? As a traveler committing to anti-racism, it’s important to pay attention to the influences and lived experiences of local communities.

Life in your home community may be different day-to-day, but there are likely overlapping influences in your daily life—namely various systems of oppression—with the communities you are visiting.

Global oppression of people of color persists due to historical and present day colonialism.

The legacy and global impact of colonialism persists into the present through capitalism, white supremacy/white nationalism, heteropatriarchy, and colorism and anti-Blackness. Anti-Blackness, meaning the racism against darker melanated skin, is inextricably connected with global white supremacism, which is upheld through systemic racism and colorism.

Colorism, the discrimination that privileges people with lighter skin and oppresses people with darker skin, was developed to create a hierarchical system of races with whiteness at the top. As such, the importance of proximity to whiteness created an anti-Black sentiment globally that has been internalized, institutionalized, and upheld through the status quo.

What is anti-Blackness? What does it mean?

The global history of anti-Blackness is important to consider, especially since systems of oppression, including anti-Blackness, were constructed, implemented, and upheld by people in power, namely wealthy white men. The social invention of whiteness as “normal” was intentional and has had lasting impacts.

Colorism impacts the way people within racial groups are discriminated against based on their skin color, sometimes by other people within their own racial group. This tool of white supremacy privileges those in closest proximity to whiteness, and on the flip side, oppresses and marginalizes those with darker skin.

This insidious system is perpetuated from within and outside of racial groups, and shows up within Black communities, Asian communities, Indigenous communities, and Latinx communities, as well as European (and their colonized) communities.

It is important, too, to name that anti-Blackness intersects with patriarchal gendered systems of oppression, as well as ableism and class systems globally. These systems are interdependent on each other in order to create and uphold global racial capitalism which relies on hierarchy, classification, dehumanization, and control.

Anti-Blackness shows up both systemically and interpersonally, which is why identifying anti-Blackness while traveling is a holistic endeavor. Pay attention to the ways you experience the color of your skin while you travel; your experience abroad may be different than your experience at home.

Traveling will help you understand that your lived experience while moving through the world is impacted by different manifestations of the same systems of oppression your life is impacted by at home.

3 major ways anti-Blackness manifests abroad

1. Systemically: Laws, policies, and society

Indigenous communities and the Global South bear the brunt of climate change—a direct manifestation of colonialism, colorism, and anti-Blackness.

Identifying anti-Blackness while traveling can happen in different ways, both through the political and the personal. Anti-Blackness, and colorism in general, are upheld through social norms, policies, and remnants of the past. Global racial capitalism also serves as a driving force for perpetuating the many intersecting systems of oppression experienced globally. Here are a few examples to consider:

• Although Ancient India was not rooted in colorism, British colonizers introduced anti-Blackness by prioritizing hiring lighter skinned Indians during their colonial era of exploitation and dominance. The caste system, which was established to control the population through class distinctions, does not inherently discriminate based on skin color, but anti-Blackness shows up in the colorism amongst caste groups which perpetuates dehumanization and control.
• The remnants of South Africa’s apartheid shows the exact ways that South Africans have been discriminated by the color of their skin, with neighborhoods like the Bo Kaap and historically Black townships as present day examples. In many places around the world, even still, the color of one’s skin determines their life—not by nature, but through systems of oppression that have been created for these very purposes.

2. Media and beauty standards

Other ways that anti-Black racism abroad has been normalized and commodified globally is through media, advertisements, and the globalization of Hollywood and Western influences. Hollywood has set standards for beauty that traverse borders and influence local beauty norms and “ideals” around the world, including within the United States. You can find many local communities idolizing white skin and white features over their own.

Models in ads around the world often appear lighter skinned than the average citizens, the Philippines being an example of a place where you can often find lighter-skinned individuals in ads and on billboards—often advertising skin-whitening creams, pills, and treatments.

Nigeria is setting an example of banning foreign models and actors to combat this form of anti-Black colorism. Disrupting these narratives that elevate the construct of whiteness as the norm is impactful on humanity globally because those narratives uphold the status quo, namely a white supremacist, ableist, heteropatriarchal society.

3. Within the act of travel

Was it easy for you to get a visa for your destination? This isn’t the case for many people worldwide.

Travel itself, when by choice and not by forced removal/displacement, requires certain privileges, but that does not mean traveling is an equitable experience. There is major passport privilege for folks who hold passports from certain countries, for example the United States; on the other hand, there are certain passports that are severely marginalized. In general, this can be critiqued through a geopolitical lens, including anti-Blackness and racism globally.

Additionally, Black travelers, and other travelers of color, may experience microaggressions while traveling and in some cases overt racism and violence. Many Black travelers and travelers of color intentionally research the places they travel to in order to determine what their experience may be like, and how to best prepare/protect themselves before they leave.

This is important to keep in mind, and possibly serves as a point of reflection for your own privilege, if you have not personally done this kind of research before you’ve traveled to new places.

READ: How to Decolonize Your Education Abroad (and What That Means)

3 tips for reacting to anti-Blackness while traveling

1. Take care of yourself & reach out for help, if needed

Identifying and observing anti-Blackness over and over is exhausting. Don’t hesitate to ask for support when you need it.

You are the expert of your own experience. Especially if you are a dark-skinned traveler, you may experience anti-Black racism abroad while you travel. This may show up in similar and different ways than at home.

If you are lighter-skinned, pay attention to the colorism and anti-Blackness you notice on your trip. You hold power to support your peers, name discrimination when you see it, and learn about experiences beyond your own while abroad. If you experience or witness anti-Blackness while abroad, take care of yourself and know you have resources available to you.

You can open up conversations with your program staff whether you have witnessed or experienced anti-Black racism abroad. Your program staff are there to support you. If they are not giving you the support you need, or if you don’t feel safe/comfortable opening up those conversations, you could also reach out to your home study abroad office.

It is not your responsibility to create change on the programs you’re on or in the countries you are traveling to if you are experiencing anti-Blackness abroad, but your voice matters. Find your support system and ask for help, if needed.

2. Ask questions & get involved

Learning about the historical context of where you are traveling may give you insight into how anti-Blackness abroad was established—likely through colonialism, missionaries, and Evangelical efforts to elevate and institutionalize white supremacy globally. Sometimes the places you travel seem to hold these ideals within their culture, but they may actually stem from Western colonial powers.

While you are traveling, ask questions about the political and historical context of where you are. Notice whose voices are easy to access, and who you have to search harder to find in the mainstream. Pay attention to the ways you are able to move about the community you are traveling in. Is there ease? Do you feel discomfort or a lack of safety? Why?

Find organizations who are addressing racism, colorism, and anti-Blackness where you are traveling, as well as when you return home. Make your global experience local and integrate what you’ve learned into your daily life. Stay involved, keep learning, and connect with community wherever you are. Combating anti-blackness is a global effort, interconnected through our various local contexts.

3. Recognize your internalized anti-Blackness

Meaningful conversations surrounding colonialism and anti-Blackness will help all participants learn and grow.

Anti-Blackness becomes internalized because society is conditioned within a white supremacist, hierarchical system. As such, you are responsible for recognizing and dismantling your internalized anti-Blackness. Anti-Blackness does not only show up within white communities, but across communities of color. This realization may be uncomfortable; sit with it, lean into learning, and find ways to disrupt your own patterns of anti-Blackness.

In order to be anti-racist and practice how to identify anti-Blackness abroad, recognizing your own patterns and biases is essential. You are on your own learning and unlearning journey, so hold yourself and others accountable to learn more and do better. And remember that everyone around you is on their learning journey, too.

Anti-Black racism abroad is still prevalent—but knowing how to identify it is the first step to global change

You will not change the world by traveling or studying abroad. You will not change the world as an individual in general. But when you begin to ask “what is anti-Blackness” and engage in how to identify anti-Blackness abroad, you will learn that your efforts will matter when you support those who are on the ground doing the hard work.

Our liberation is interconnected because we are an interdependent species. Let your experiences teach you new lessons, change your perspective of yourself and your place in the world, and open up new opportunities for committing to global collective liberation. The arc towards justice is not an easy one, but when you organize in community, real change is possible.

NEXT: 6 Ways to Commit to Antiracism as a Traveler