Well, to be honest, I don’t think traveling as a black family is a big difference than from traveling back at home. Of course, it’s very empowering to show others back home that “hey we’re a black family and it’s not just Caucasians or wealthy people that can afford to travel overseas!” We’re just regular shmegular black family from the Bronx.
Traveling as a black family we never really experienced racism or ever really felt much different. We always try to travel the same way as a local would in town. If you follow us you know we love to do local things in local places.
If anyone ever had anything to say they never said it to us, so I guess we'll never know if the locals thought we were odd or not! Anytime we ever met locals, they showed nothing but love to our family and welcomed while traveling.
Of course my husband, Cory is way darker than me but we get just the same amount of stares. One great thing about my husband's looks is that he's tall, dark-skinned, and covered with tattoos. With that being said I feel like his looks make us look like less of a target to get mugged or picked pocketed! Even with this reasoning for his looks, you can never be too confident and we never doubt that it can happen to us. One great benefit to his looks is that people always mistake him as the famous rapper "Travis Scott or ASAP Rocky"! Most of the time Cory likes to go along with taking pictures with people and it's hilarious! It really gives us a kick of excitement while we're traveling since no one really knows us back home! There have even been times where we received special "treatment", so who wouldn't mind!
Everyone's first impression of my nationality is being Hispanic. Which I don’t even have an ounce of Hispanic in me. My light skin features do come in handy when we travel to Hispanic countries because normally they think I'm one of them & don’t take advantage of us as much other whiter tourist that travel to their country. That’s one of the benefits of being black & white and being light skinned! But honestly, I guess I fit in more places than him because even when we're in countries such as Europe and they can’t tell what my nationality is. They start to speak the language of the country we are into me instead of Cory. Just like Cory I also receive many stares, mainly because I have so many tattoos. This stare doesn't bother me much because I get the same stares back home from my tattoos. You kinda just get used to it.
Then there are people that look at our daughter, Amiyah. She's just this little brown skin girl with an afro! It's hard to miss this little noise maker! She has character but they love her. Whether it's on the plane or in another country, she gets more attention than us! In fact, I think if there’s ever even a culture difference Amiyah breaks the ice and her friendly heart meets the strangers we meet as we travel.
When we traveled to Japan, Amiyah was the star the whole time! Not many Japanese see people of color or see an afro like Amiyah's so they would ask to take pictures with her and even touch her hair! We thought it was hilarious. Whether they were laughing with us or at us it didn’t matter we enjoyed the attention and got just as much as a kick out of it as they did because we never have seen someone so surprised to see a curly afro before!
The only place we actually felt like an outcast was in Sri Lanka. It actually shocked us because this was one country that couldn’t keep their eyes off of us. We were all people of color so we never really understood why they would stare so much. Later into our trip, we found out that most the locals thought we're someone famous and we weren't the "typically Americans" that travel to their country! Sri Lankans are used to seeing blonde hair and light skinned Americans that traveled to their country. Some of the locals even asked to take pictures of us because we're so different.
Traveling with a positive mindset can change your entire travel experience. If you're worried about not fitting in where you travel then guess what?!!!! Your not! That's one of the beauties of traveling... to experience a whole "different world" than your used too at home. Embrace yourself and let people stare! Don't worry if your being judged! You probably will be judged & just as you may judge the country your traveling to for being so different! People of color are the ambassadors for travel!!!
