Black, Twenty Three and in a Foreign Country

One of my greatest fears has been the extension of the GreenBook. The Greenbook more aptly called The Negro Motorist Green Book was written by Victor Hugo Green in 1936. Victor Hugo Green created this book to guide African Americans through their cross country travels. This guide provided crucial information for where Black people were welcome, where they weren’t, and how to avoid traveling through and around those places. As far as society goes, Black people have since adapted the Greenbook to cover the world. With the help of Facebook groups, TikTok Posts and Podcasts that discuss what it is like being Black in various foreign countries, we now have a broader understanding of where we are and aren’t welcome.

Since I was as young as six I have had the unfortunate awareness of knowing what I look like to others. I know by how someone’s eyes shift whether they are seeing me a Black person, a woman, both or nothing at all. Those looks can tell me a lot. I know where I can go, what states not to frequent, what backroads to not take and so on. In all that awareness (that teeters on a hyper awareness depending on where I am) I realized that the world I wished to see so badly might not be any different. As I got older and began to imagine going to places further than Texas and the US border I had to wonder, “did they even like Black people there?” Simply asking that kind of question to which I felt like I already knew the answers to shrunk my walls. As a chronic overthinker one simple question turned into a blanket of fear.

In 2022 I was making plans to move to Spain for 9 months as a Teacher’s Assistant. As if the timing couldn’t have been more perfect, I was reading a self help book by Clinical Psychologist Dr. Meg Jay called “The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and how to Make the Most of Them”. In the first section of the book she talks of building your Identity Capital. Identity Capital is essentially your life’s resume. So far I had nothing to show for mine, but a Degree in Writing. Spain was to be another bit of Identity Capital, and reading that chapter as I was making plans to move there felt like a point in the right direction. In spite of that reassuring olive branch, I still had doubts. Not only was I Black and a Woman, but I was also American. I thought, “what business did I have going to Europe by myself” and “did I even deserve to go?” Multiple people acted as anchors to my rising levels of fear: My mother, my mother’s friend who had lived in Spain, and a friend of mine from college. When I expressed these insecurities to my father he told me that not only am I not tied to a husband, kids, a mortgage and bills but I am young. He told me that there was no better time to do, than now.

They were all right. I finished “The Defining Decade” well into my second month of being in Madrid. On page 193, Jay writes a line I wish I had seen when I was getting cold feet back in October of that year. She writes, “Confidence is trusting yourself to get the job done.” I realized that I had not trusted myself, but was feeding off of the faith of everyone around me. As nurturing and necessary as it was to get my wings flapping, I still did not trust myself. All of my anchors that supported me told me I should go, so I did. But I wasn’t telling myself to go, in fact I wrote in my journal what the f am I even doing. What I was doing was doubting myself every step of the process. Quite the pivotal moment for me as I sat alone in my tiny apartment, so much so that I wrote it on a sticky-note and tacked it on the wall. It occurred to me that for the first time I was doing something that I truly wanted without the undertone that it was something that I had to do. In retrospect, had I gone to a foreign country with my friends or family I don’t believe I would have been as hemmed up in fear as I was. I would have had my people with me and it would have been on a vacation timeline as opposed to a contractual work agreement timeline. But no, I was jumping into this adventure on a level that had no gradual build up, head first off the springboard. And this has been the single greatest feat I have conquered in my 23 years of life, and the longest I have ever been away from home.

By nature I am a sensitive person. I have always cared about what people think of me and that has left me both appreciative and devastated at times. I’m only just now learning when to prioritize how much and for what I truly want to care about. Being in Madrid for 9 months by myself has strengthened the trust I am trying to build within myself. How can I care what any man or woman thinks of me when the Sagrada Familia is literally right behind me? That’s not to say I’m headed to the foreign places I have heard absolutely deplore Black people, absolutely not. Although southern racism has made me acutely attentive to people’s perception of me, I am not tough. I am however going to travel where I can. Travel where I am loved, without caring about what people may think of me. And take lots and lots and lots of pictures along the way.