black expats
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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: 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: 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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#WeOutOrNah? The Internal Conflict of a Conscious Black Person Postelection
“Ohio. North Carolina. Florida. My God. This is really happening.” As last night’s results rolled in, I was hunkered down in a war room with colleagues. Together we watched our greatest fear, and that of millions of others around the country, be actualized in real time. My body stiffened as state by state, vote by…
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Want to Pull a #Blaxit? Becoming a Black Expat Is Harder Than You Think
#Blaxit was last week’s Twitter reality check as folks explained the realities of what American culture would lose if African Americans, indeed, returned to “Africa.” (In quotes because most of us wouldn’t really know to which part of Africa to go.) But, beyond that, the conversation about moving out of the U.S. has surged over…