Traveling While Black

In November 2019, my friend and I went on a seven-day-long trip to the island of Bali in Indonesia. We’d planned to take the trip for years, and I was so excited we finally made it happen, I didn’t think to prepare myself for how we’d be perceived there as two Black girls from Africa.

My friend had golden brown dreadlocks that hung loosely down her slim back and glorious dark skin, whereas I had short, artificially bleached blonde hair, and light skin that was burned by the summer sun. In our ventures across different parts of the island, locals and other tourists alike often asked her if she was from the Caribbean (apparently assuming she was Rastafarian because of her hair), and I was misidentified as African American. “Do they not know there is a whole continent that homes Blacks in all shades!” I’d vent to her after encounters like these.

My friend has traveled extensively to other countries for work, and, she told me, her blackness had been exoticized in other places before, so this treatment in Indonesia came as no surprise to her. In fact, she called the treatment in Bali “racism lite.” As a dark-skinned black girl, she was already desensitized to how the world receives and perceives her — she experiences colorism in her home country, and is well versed in the global media’s underrepresentation of darker skin and the overall complexities and limitations of navigating spaces in her body. She said she had come to a point where traveling meant settling for the “better devil,” meaning that being fetishized was a lesser evil to her than being physically touched and prodded without her consent by curious strangers. Her overexposure to racism led her to look past the violence she experienced as a survival tactic, creating a spectrum that enabled her to compartmentalize how she was treated based on what she could or could not ignore; if she found she could ignore certain treatment — which generally involved most things besides her hair or body being touched — she would in order to be able to enjoy a larger experience, and to prevent herself from losing herself all together.

I couldn’t compartmentalize this treatment, though. I felt like our bodies were hyper-visible our whole trip. From the texture of our hair, to the shape of our bodies and tone of our skin, to the way we spoke, we attracted gazes. We were pointed at and sometimes nonconsensually photographed by shameless onlookers, which was jarring and incredibly uncomfortable. It felt like we were stripped of our agency when people giggled when they saw us or insisted on taking pictures when we told them not to. We were reduced to objects others found fascinating, and were consumed to satisfy others’ curiosity.

We had a number of experiences that stood out. One day, we toured a beautiful temple surrounded by water. Although the sun was unforgiving, the ocean seemed particularly unsettled, so we were not allowed to go explore the interior of the temple — all we could do was take pictures. While my friend and I were taking in the views, an elderly lady on our tour asked me to take a picture of her with my friend. She didn't speak a word of English, but it was clear what she wanted and we obliged. But then, a young group of Chinese tourists began to follow us and watch us. We tried to hide behind our hats and shades and rushed back to our tour car. It was clear they felt entitled to us, as though we, too, were part of the artifacts they came to see on display. Another day, we went to a spa, where the ladies who worked there blatantly asked about the size and shapes of our round butts in an effort to understand if they were “real.”

In spite of globalization and the ability of more people than ever before to be able to access more information than any other time in history, white supremacy persists in the name of ignorance. In this case, it didn't even require the service of white people to take effect. In an Asian country that has predominantly Asian people, the racism, and the power dynamic that comes with it, were still apparent. The us vs. them bias was very much alive.

As Black women, our worth was still measured based on our proximity to whiteness. Traveling to Asia while Black and a woman came with a violent sense of hyper-visibility and awareness of the self as “other” from the perspective of those who perceived our presence as a curious encounter. Our black skin meant we were constantly under surveillance and scrutiny; it didn't feel like we were being seen as people but rather observed/watched as anthropological subjects. It was challenging because it didn't feel like we were being regarded as equals with just as much agency as they had, but rather devoid of our right to object to their wanting to photograph or touch us. The hyper-visibility came with an imbalance of power that we were forced to tolerate and take in our strides to avoid ruining our experience. I felt a complex set of emotions —, although I didn't feel unwelcome, I didn't feel welcome either. There wasn't an overt acceptance or acknowledgment of my humanity. The question of who has the freedom and right to belong in the world stays under question. This made me realize that despite the changing times, navigating the world without being put under a microscope is still a privilege. Systemic racism still limits who has the right to occupy space and travel freely.