How Travel Made Me Understand and Redefine My Blackness

A few lessons on moving through the world unapologetically.

For a long time blackness has been on trial. We’ve seen it in pop culture, where black people are always portrayed in stereotypical mediums. The category of the “other” black person — someone that doesn’t fit the mold either because of the way they speak, act, the music they listen to or any combination of these things. I was always other.

Blackness is just another box one has to fit into, and unlike the definition, just being black doesn’t mean you can simply exist in your blackness. No, not if you are different. For a long time, I never understood what it meant to be black in a white world, and own that blackness; until I traveled the world. Here is the story of how travel made me understand, redefine and own my blackness.

In the Bahamas, where I grew up, the degree of Blackness was defined by certain things. Namely classism, colorism, and wealth. Depending on what side of the island you grew up on your blackness had to act following those rules. “The haves”, “they have a little bit and the have-nots.” I grew up somewhere between have a little and have not, but I went to private school my entire life because my parents wanted to afford me opportunities, so it was quite a weird space to be in. Especially when I had family members that had a lot or had a little or was somewhere in the middle like me.

Growing up on an island with a predominately black population skewed my worldview on what it meant to be black from the opposite end of the spectrum (the non-black view of blackness). Life there growing up was challenging at times. I wasn’t adept at code-switching as yet and so it was hard for me. I was picked on a lot by my peers (outside of my schooling) and some family members on my father’s side for the way I talked, the number of books I read and even the type of clothes I wore.

I was always quite articulate as a child and hardly used dialect. As a result, my blackness was constantly challenged by those who…

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But in the midst of pursuing that, sooner or later, we’re going to be struck by something that is affecting us deeply, something that makes us realize, that we’re running out of time.