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For Those Considering Blaxit, I Present to You: Seoul, South Korea
Like most people who aren’t from Asia, I was tempted to paint South Korea and Japan with the same brush. Not because I had read ample historical literature about them and had come to an educated conclusion, but because I was lazy, young and stupid. Should you find yourself fascinated by tae kwon do, kimchi…
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For Those Considering Blaxit, I Present to You: Japan
If Hollywood is to be believed, then gap years are the sole domain of white folks “finding themselves” in foreign lands. From Sean Penn’s accidental comedy Into the Wild, in which a diary entry that keeps threatening like a storm cloud to be a meaningful anecdote is reduced to an absurd cautionary tale about the…
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For Those Considering Blaxit, I Present to You: New Zealand
Imagine, if you will, a land that measures 40 leagues from the Far Downs in the west to Brandywine Bridge in the east. And from the northern moors to the marshes in the deep south, ripe fruit is in abundance, pockets of forest and snowcapped mountains dot the periphery to the edge of the horizon,…
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For Those Considering Blaxit, I Present to You: Jakarta, Indonesia
Well, it finally happened. I jumped out of a moving car in rush hour traffic to chase a black dude—Dr. Umar Johnson would be proud. But it wasn’t Idris Elba, who is destined to help me breed superhot, superblack superchildren … sorry, Umar. I risked life and limb (and my producer, who chased after me)…
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For Those Considering Blaxit, I Present to You: Melbourne (Yes, Australia)
There are few places more mystifying to people than Australia. In fact, the only thing more mystifying to non-Australians is a black Australian. After living in Melbourne for 7.5 years, I now have an obsession with surfing, brunch and stand-up comedy and an accent that sounds like it’s been mauled by a Yeti. In other…
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For Those Considering Blaxit, I Present to You: Budapest, Hungary
I’ll be completely honest: When it comes to hypothetical homes for African Americans who are considering a post-Trump “blaxodus,” Eastern Europe was way off my radar. Like many former Soviet-bloc states, Hungary is a place that grapples with unemployment and poverty while its leaders hoard taxpayer funds to line their own pockets. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/a-whiff-of-corruption-in-orban-s-hungary-a-1129713.html Prime Minister…
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For Those Considering Blaxit, I Present to You: Berlin
Last year I went on a tour of Western Europe in search of a city that I could potentially call home. I went to London, Amsterdam … and I would have kept going, through the overpriced splendor of Scandinavia, or the lush, economically disenfranchised ruins of Athens, but Berlin stopped me in my tracks. It’s…
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For Those Considering Blaxit, I Present to You: Stockholm
It’s been nearly a year since Ulysses Burley III first coined the term “Blaxit,” a tongue-in-cheek hypothetical response to the hypothetical question: What if black people decided to blaxodus their black asses elsewhere? The question of what would be exported began with the NBA, Beyoncé and Neil deGrasse Tyson, but then Awesomely Luvvie got on…
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Black Travel: A Tradition and Rite of Passage
I was 14 years old when my parents took me to Costa Rica, and I was kicking and screaming the entire way. It was my first time abroad, and America Online had just established a monthly flat rate for unlimited usage. But instead of starting conversations online with the requisite “age, sex, location,” I ended…
