There are different types of safety.

Beyond the Book: Traveling while Black

Few things make you more aware of what it means to be Black in the world than travel.

Our little family is a week into our little familymoon/honeymoon. We started out in Paris and arrived in London today. In a few days the kids fly home and Gabriel and I will spend the remainder of our trip in Portugal.

We came to Paris for the second time, only two months after our first trip. When we came back from our first trip to Paris, we sat in our lovely bedroom and our lovely home and I said: “We really need to work on our four year plan.”

Or “four year plan” is a name for the various dreams Gabriel and I have had of leaving the US since we first started dating. These dreams and desires have turned more into a need as the years have gone by.

It is really particular type of brutal to be a Black person in the US. A trip almost anywhere else can give you a little more air to breathe for a while, but Paris was really a special experience for me.

I've come to realize that I can't keep doing this work year in and year out and still live in a country year round that wants me dead on multiple levels. A country that hates my Blackness, my queerness, my gender. I can barely do it now at 41. I don't want to imagine spending my 50’s here all the time. I absolutely cannot imagine spending my retirement years (whatever that means when you're a writer who has no 401k or any real concept of savings) in a place so hostile to my existence.

We'll always have our Seattle home (at least that's the plan). Our family and community connections run deep. But our 4 year plan is basically just the idea that by the time both kids are off at college or whatever early adult adventures they decide on, we'll be ready to start being somewhere else a good part of the year.

Gabriel is a Black American and Ethiopian American person. I'm a queer Black American and Nigerian-American woman. Absolutely everywhere we go, Gabriel meets Habesha people. He makes instant friends, shares stories, gets restaurant recommendations. It can seem like he's at home in almost any place he can find just about anywhere Habesha people are to be found - at least at first glance.

That has not often been the case for me. There are very few Nigerians in the US (and like 10 in Seattle). When I do meet other Nigerians and am recognized as a fellow Nigerian, it is usually by Nigerian men who are hitting on me (there's a lot of reasons why this is beyond “DUDES” related to racist immigration rules that create particular demographics and pressures on the Nigerian diaspora that I won't go into right now because it's a lot more words and I am on my honeymoon). ANYWAYS, this is a somewhat universal annoyance/general reminder of unsafety that many women and people perceived as women experience, made more heartbreaking when it's often your only chance to interact face to face with people of similar heritage to you who aren't your siblings in months. It adds to the general isolation of being a Black person living in Seattle and expands it across the entire US and beyond.

I didn't get to travel much as a kid or younger adult unless it was a work trip. I didn't have a passport until I was almost 40. Travel is expensive. Passports are expensive. These are not luxuries I've had access to until the last few years.

Pretty much every Black person in the US knows the “How safe is xx place for Black people” Google search. This modern day equivalent of a green book is usually about assessing a very specific kind of safety: will this trip get my Black ass killed.

The bar is depressingly low, but below it is actual injury or death and a lot of places fall below that bar.

Every place that I travel has had a decent chance of being above that bar - many places have a better chance than just about any place the US - my own Seattle included.

Gabriel and I have both loved, when traveling outside of the US, the brief respite from the horrific ways that our country loves to try to kill us. It might not sound like much but when you don't have it - it's a lot.

But our first day in Paris, as we made our way through the 18th arrondissement I saw so many West African faces. Faces that looked like my siblings, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my father. People crowding the streets yelling and laughing with a particular beauty and gusto that feels like home in my bones.

Walking down the streets as a Black queer Nigerian-American woman I felt a type of safety that I very rarely get to experience. A safety that goes beyond “will I survive this?” A safety of being truly seen and also not seen as a target. A safety of family and food and laughter that makes an entire neighborhood a place to live.

I've literally never had that before and now I know that I can't live without it.

So we went back for another visit this trip and it won't be our last, I'm sure. Currently, we're spending a few days in Brixton and Liverpool - mostly to say we did and to please a Beatles-obsessed teen. But we're soaking up whatever Black community we can (mostly in the form of Caribbean and Nigerian food) we can while we're here.

When we came back from our first trip to Paris I immediately started googling “best places to live abroad if you are Black and queer” and Portugal kept coming up, so we added it to the honeymoon. I really don't know what to expect there but I'm excited. I'll keep you updated.

At the end of the day it's not really about Paris - a city with a long history of violent colonization of populations of color that is too focused on the oppression, exploitation, and disenfranchisement of other populations of color and religious minorities to be as virulently anti-Black as the US. It's not about Portugal either. It’s about how moments of possibility can throw us up against the walls of our oppression in a way that can make the need for escape even more urgent than the everyday violence we have been subjected to every day of our lives ever could.

Right now I'm on a honeymoon. I'm enjoying the privilege of such an amazing time away. But I'm also searching, and likely will be with every trip we take in these next few years, for a place that looks like more than safety. A place that maybe looks a little like freedom.

Image description: a photo of me and Gabriel, smiling in Paris.