The Black Travel Movement (BTM)

Photo by Karl Callwood on Unsplash

Hello readers,

As mentioned in the last issue, when putting together a theme for this month, I changed gears at the last minute and changed the theme to Black History Month and tourism. I updated the theme because I came across this article titled The Black Travel Movement: A Catalyst for Social Change. I chose this article which is mostly about the travel experience for Black Americans. I encourage you to read that journal article in full. This week we just have the article, no links, they’ll be back. :)

Why did I choose this article? I want to learn about tourism experiences that are not the same as my own. I’m a white woman and have travelled solo, in groups, and with friends quite a bit without incident. My experiences are not every traveller’s experience though. I want to make sure I am aware of how other travellers might be unfairly treated so that I can do the opposite and correct any behaviours in myself that I was/am unaware of. I think self-reflection is good.

My intention in sharing this article and further reading is to reinforce that tourism as an industry and travel are spaces that should be inclusive and welcoming to all. I touched on this in a previous issue with a lot of links and stories about travelling with disabilities.

Lastly, the researchers capitalized Black throughout their article so I have done the same here.

The researchers (Dillette and Benjamin) noted that their study focuses on Black Americans at the end of the article and how it could be expanded.

“Although this study captured the voices of select BTM leaders, we do realize that some voices were missing, including Black travellers and Black travel movements located outside of the United States. Consequently, we would like to argue for future work to explore the lived experiences of people who participated in travel with BTM companies.”

The writers identified a few themes in Black travel:

The first is that Black travel is not new, but there is not a lot of research on the topic.

Black people gravitated toward travelling in larger groups, a behaviour linked to the fear of racism and discrimination while travelling. More recent studies found that travel attitudes, behaviours, and experiences are still linked to issues of marginality, racism, and discrimination.

In the late 1800s, small affluent groups of Black people began to travel and participate in leisure along the railroads in the United States, some even making it to Europe and Africa.

The Negro Motorist Green Book, a handbook to help Black people safely navigate the road, was published in 1936 (Green 1947). This history is important to the evolution of Black travel because it played a significant role in indoctrinating attitudes of racism in American society, ultimately making it very challenging for Black people to experience leisure through travel and recreation.

Representation and awareness matter in the tourism industry.

Photo by Atikh Bana on Unsplash

For the study, the researchers spoke to/interviewed Black owners of tourism businesses.

“Overall, we contacted all 20 companies currently in the movement—and were able to secure interviews with nine leaders. Each leader was the owner and founder of their company and had been in business between four and nine years (Table 1). Five leaders identified as women and four as men. Eight companies offered domestic and international group trips as their foundational service, while the ninth company was a home-sharing service. Other products and services offered included branded merchandise, conferences and events, keynote speaking, private tours, group camping trips, local gatherings, and online travel communities. All nine leaders identified as Black and were between the ages of 30 and 50 years.”

Many of the study’s participants commented on how travel was transformational for them and empowered them to start their businesses. Some of them commented that because their ancestors were enslaved and not allowed to learn, those limiting beliefs have persisted through generations of their grandparents and parents, and they set out to change that. One business owner realized that his role evolved to not only be a safe haven for Black travellers but also for Black business owners and entrepreneurs in the tourism industry to connect and build authentic connections with each other.

Many of the participants stated that they didn’t always feel safe or welcome as travellers, and they have not traditionally been spoken to or represented in tourism marketing. This issue was brought up in the types of activities and luxury experiences that are not marketed across the board.

Yachting is a really great example where there’s lots of reasons why we [Black travelers] are not exposed to certain things. For instance, it’s not that renting a boat for a week is expensive, it’s that we don’t have access, because our parents don’t own boats. When we go sailing, you’ll typically see Caucasian families where the father has learned to sail from his father. They own their own boats and it is generational. They can afford to, and we could afford to take a yachting trip, but we don’t know how to drive it. We don’t know how to sail a boat. It’s not even something that would even come up in conversation.

That made me wonder how many tourism leisure activities like boating are not even coming up in conversation. There are missed opportunities to include and teach new hobbies and sports in the tourism industry like boating or sailing, scuba, surfing, skiing, the list goes on.

Black entrepreneurs in the tourism industry are less likely to secure capital as well. The researchers stated that they are four times more likely to be denied a business loan than their white counterparts. I don’t have statistics to share but this isn’t just happening in the tourism industry. It also makes me wonder how other non-white entrepreneurs are treated.

Dillette and Benjamin wrote that they looked at the Black Travel Movement and interviewed the industry experts and business owners while keeping Critical Race Theory and Social Movement Theory in mind. If I can find further reading on either of those for the next issue, I’ll link them.

‘This study sheds light on the role of BTM leaders in creating a societal shift toward equity in the travel and tourism industry. The justification for including both theoretical perspectives stems from CRT providing a basis for critiquing the racial tension while SMT provides a framework for understanding how social change mobilizes within traditionally marginalized populations.”

There is a lot to digest in this article and so I’ve kept my review to the main points and themes and a lot of quotes. I don’t have personal experiences to share on this topic but it felt like an important and interesting topic to share. If anyone has comments, I welcome them or you can message me directly.

The Black Travel Movement: A Catalyst for Social Change

Alana Dillette and Stefanie Benjamin

Journal of Travel Research, February 22, 2021, Volume 61, Issue 3

For further reading:

Black Travel: The Movement

Black Travel Movement: Systemic racism informing tourism

The Rise of the Black Travel Movement

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Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash

Consuming

Books: Brag Better: Mastering the Art of Fearless Self-Promotion - I need to read things like this because I am not good at self-promotion. It was a slower read for me because I was taking notes but I got this from the library and I will buy it to take more notes.

The book I am currently reading is called In Praise of Slow. A friend loaned it to me,

Movies: Stillwater - I started watching this 2021 film on an unusually slow work afternoon thinking it would be background noise but I was invested in the story quickly. Matt Damon plays a dad from Oklahoma who visits his estranged daughter in prison in Marseilles, France. He goes intending to learn about her case and to help her and ends up building a little life there. I liked it, it was kind of a slow burn. It also stars Camille Cottin, a French actress who is in another show I liked, Call My Agent. If you have not watched Call My Agent, I highly recommend it as well.

That is it for this issue! See you next time in the middle of March.

-Sonya