black travel
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#TheRootTrip: A Food (and Family) Connection in Phoenix
I asked folks, “Which black businesses should I check out in Phoenix?” and universally people said, “Lo-Lo’s Chicken and Waffles.” I agreed. But what they didn’t know is that the owner of Lo-Lo’s is my cousin Larry White. Here’s the quick-and-dirty black-family story of how we’re cousins: Larry’s mother, Elizabeth White, is my Aunt Bethy,…
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#TheRootTrip: A Ghost of the Green Book in Phoenix
The dilapidated neighborhood sits in the dark shadow of downtown Phoenix, an American shantytown that time forgot. It’s a block with boarded-up, lean-to homes with glass windows that have been replaced by Home Depot plastic sheeting. Lingering are beaten-up F-150 trucks with giant American flags as their only point of pride, and desperate shirtless men…
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Drive Black, Buy Black: The Root Goes on the Blackest Road Trip Ever With Author Lawrence Ross
Meet Lawrence! What’s up, everyone! My name is Lawrence Ross, and if there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I love black people. Yeah, I know people like to say that, but I truly do. I’m fascinated by who we are, where we’ve been and where we’re going. And over the past…
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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…
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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…