I’m really not a fan of the ~travelling the world is necessary to broaden your mind~ idea
obviously it’s classist and ableist because not everyone has the money, free time, and / or the ability to jetset around the globe at will,
but it’s also really insidiously racist. the white people who espouse this idea tend to have a ~the world is your oyster~ kind of mindset and a really nasty entitlement to the countries and cultures of non-white people. treating Asian / African / Latin American countries as your own personal playground without thought to the people who actually live there is seriously disrespectful
not to mention that these people often tout this kind of international travel as a cure for racism or narrowmindedness, as if just being around a lot of brown people automatically makes you find it within your heart to consider us human, as if you’re doing us some kind of huge favour by oversimplifying and misrepresenting our cultures and taking your welcome in our homelands for granted
plus these are the kinds of people who will act really presumptuously towards brown people living in the West, assuming some kind of familiarity with or even superiority over us because they think that they understand our countries, cultures, languages, foods, customs, experiences, etc. as well as or better than we do
you do not understand my culture because you’ve been to my country, or because you’ve been somewhere (that you think is) vaguely near my country. and especially considering the massive wealth disparities between white people and people of colour in the West, displaying this kind of smug superciliousness to people who’ve never been able to afford a trip to their own homeland is especially rude and hurtful
I mean by all means travel if you want to but don’t act like it makes you better somehow and don’t act like it makes you exempt from being a racist piece of shit because it really, really doesn’t
ALso there’s something really sinister about treating countries that your ancestors colonized (+ from whose colonization and continued exploitation you materially benefit) as your personal sources of ‘inspiration’ or ‘enlightenment’ or whatever,
especially when coupled with the aforementioned habit of these kinds of people to lord their travel over the children / grandchildren / etc. of brown immigrants who have never been to their own countries because their ancestors were more or less forced out of them due to said economic exploitation
travelling to brown + Black countries with this mindset is a blatant display of the fruits of colonialism + you are continuing your ancestors’ bloody work
honestly I’d go so far as to say that white people travelling to / living in colonised countries is unavoidably racist + neocolonialist considering the surrounding historical and sociopolitical context
just like getting tattoos and piercings, just like converting to certain religions. colonialist history makes these actions inherently + unavoidably racist on some level
but I’m not saying that white people should never do these things and I don’t think that anyone really is saying that (I mean, probably partially because we know that it wouldn’t work + that we’d get attacked for it, but you know)
all that I am asking and all that anyone is really asking is that youacknowledge that context, acknowledge the very real harm from which you benefit, which you passively contribute to and which you are capable of actively contributing to, and do your very best to mitigate it. really really think about how your actions speak, work to analyse + change your mindset if necessary and do as little harm as possible
but most white people really aren’t receptive to this kind of nuance. they interpret any attempt to remind them of this context and any request / demand that they remember this context + act with sensitivity to it as a personal attack when in fact that is very, very far from what is actually being said
Reaching for the stars
So, it is racist for people to want to go and experience different cultures, talk to different people from that culture, understand that culture and see that “different” does not mean “better” or “worse"?
So, student exchange programs are inherently racist? Does that mean that Chinese and Japanese tourists are racist?
I suppose, though, that does not count, since “white people” have never colonised China. Also, since the Chinese are not white, I suppose that somehow, this is not an issue, which would be double-standards, but that is not exactly new.
After a quick glance at OP’s blog, she describes herself as:
½ Arabised Amazigh (1st generation born in the U.S. Moroccan-American immigrant)
¼ Mestiza (Mayan / Spanish)
¼ white
upper middle class
which I believe is very interesting. It appears that this rant must come from the Moroccan side of her heritage. I also presume that the comment about “converting to certain religions” being racist must be a subtle nod towards Islam, considering the Islam tag on her blog.
Why do I find this interesting?
She speaks of white people colonising different countries, but both Islamic Caliphates and Spain colonised Morocco in its past. Morocco’s Islamic culture will therefore be a result of early Muslim colonisation, the colonisation that she calls “racist.” Since Morocco’s official state religion is Sunni Islam, I would imagine that the earlier Islamic colonisation has had a greater effect on the nation’s history overall.
I would also be very careful when trying to state that people converting to a particular religion are racist, implying that certain religions are for “people of colour” only, and therefore implying that they can be “appropriated.”
It is very, very hypocritical for either Muslims or Christians to say that their religions could be “appropriated,” since Judaism is the first Abrahamic religion and the other two “built” on it. If we were going to go down that route, it is only logical to then go further and say that Islam and Christianity “appropriated” Judaism.
Then again, as religion is personal faith, it would be idiotic to claim that, so it is also idiotic to claim that being a certain religion is “racist.” Or are all Imams etc that happily accept and support white converts somehow “race traitors”? No, they are not. They are religious people that are following their teachings to the best of their ability.
What does strike me, on this site, that people of certain extractions go on and on about “their cultures” and how angry they are about “white people” appropriating them from “white” countries, where they act like they can speak over the indigenous people that actually, currently live there. If a parent is from there, for example, they can listen, but as soon as they travel there or want to explore that country’s culture for themselves, they ironically become the same “Western colonists” that they are so angry about.
US citizens of Irish extraction cannot speak over people that were born or live in Ireland, for example.
And as for the fact that this woman admits that she is “upper middle class” says that she is one of those “classist” people that speaks over people that are actually lower class and poor.