What traveling taught me about White privilege and anti-Blackness— from a Black woman’s perspective
Exiting the plane and dragging my suitcase through the thinly stretched corridor towards the arrivals gate at Milan Malpensa Airport in Italy, I felt my chest tighten and my heart beat louder and louder. This feeling of distress was familiar, but that did not make it any easier. On the walk, I nestled into the sea of white faces that had also exited the flight from Prague, Czech Republic and I just knew it was going to happen again. With a sigh, I braced myself by moving my passport to the front of my pocket and getting a firm grip on it so I could easily whip it out to show to the immigration official when he asked me.
Like he was reading my mind, the immigration official picked me — the only brown face in the crowd — and flagged me down with a pointing finger and a “I need to see your passport, please.” I pushed my way to the side of the hallway and watched the white faces step aside and stare at me as if I had done something bad yet still continuing out towards the arrival gate to leave the airport. Although I had expected this blatantly unequal treatment, I was still embarrassed, angry, and nervous. This is because the open borders policy of the Schengen Area explicitly says that “any person, irrespective of nationality, may cross the internal borders without being subjected to border checks.” So despite the fact that the policy says that I would be exempt from any sort of immigration official flagging me down and demanding to see my passport and that I am technically free to literally walk off the plane and into another country — as the sea of white faces did — I was the exception. Because I was the only Black face exiting the flight.
Although I had nothing to worry about — nothing illegal in my bag and a perfectly valid visa glued right onto the first page of my privileged American passport — my hand was shaking as I passed my document to the official. Maybe it’s the fact that I was nervous about having to explain myself in a language that I was still learning or maybe its the fact that every time I traveled throughout Italy alone, I was singled out and racially profiled. In my head, I quickly recalled what I had learned in my Italian studies lectures about the current immigration “crisis” that had an influx of North African migrants entering into Italy and the insensitive response that the country’s leaders have taken to keep Black faces out. With that information, I tried to understand how the immigration official probably saw me right now. As he opened my passport, scanned the document and looked down and back up to me twice to ensure it was really me on the page, I realize a devastating thought; yet again, I am at first glance a threat to him. I am not a person who is bright, accomplished, and worthy, but rather a threat that reminds him to do his job, and perhaps to keep the White-patrons of his country, safe.
With this thought, rage floods through my veins, and my voice trembles as I blurt out in English — “Is there a problem? Why did you only pick me but not any of those people? What happened to open borders, sir?” He raises an eyebrow, looks over to the white crowd passing us, and says that even under their open borders policy they pick one or two people off of each flight to interrogate and that I just so happened to be that person. With that explanation, he implicitly told me that they have a racist policy in place that goes against an international agreement. It made me want to press him more — tell him that I have been through this airport at least three other times and have always gotten racially profiled in this same spot, as a matter of fact, and have only seen other Black people get profiled each and every time. I wanted to tell him that he is wrong and he should be ashamed. But I also wanted to reassure him that that he had nothing to worry about with me — I am as good as they come. To tell him that my parents raised me right, I had good grades, I went to a good school, as if that piece of information would stop him from seeing the color of my skin and my naturally dark curly hair. I wanted so desperately to prove to this stranger, in the middle of the airport, that I am worthy, I am good, and I am enough, in the most fundamental sense.
But the rage I felt quickly dissipated into nervousness. The triggering reminder that I am still a threat — even when I travel abroad — is heightened when I also remember that, in the USA, the place that I call home — if you are Black and stopped by law enforcement things can go south very quickly and you can easily end up in police custody and/or be brutally injured or killed for doing nothing. In that moment, I felt myself reacting to the fear of being unarmed and Black when in the presence of police, and I pushed all of my thoughts to the back of my mind and focused on getting out of this situation. Accepting my defeat in order to preserve my own personhood, I nodded and simply said “okay” to the immigration officer, despite the anger and disappointment I held in my heart. In that moment, I had to stand down and silence my own pain in front of the very person whose seemingly subtle and anti-Black decision had caused me to feel this way.
After questioning me about where I was coming from, how long I was staying, and what I would be doing in the country, the immigration official finally let me go and I felt relief in the purest form, a feeling to which I had been accustomed after other racial profiling incidents. But as I walked out of the airport, boarded my train, and slid into my seat and braced myself for the long journey to another part of the country, this five-minute encounter that I have repeatedly had in the same spot in the same airport was so hard to shake from my mind. As much as I did not want it to, I despised the fact that I felt like this moment had defined me in the eyes of that immigration official, registering me, a Black woman: first as a threat, then as aggressive, and finally as passive or submissive. Considering this, the memory moved from relief of escaping the situation to bitterness and resentment because I had to go through that unjust situation.
Trying to feel more empowered about my actions, I raced to grab my phone from my bag and called my mother to tell her that I did it; I finally stood up to the man in the airport who made me feel small. After I explained the situation, she gasped and said “Grace, what? No! What if he had detained you, or worse, for questioning him like that? You cannot do that.” Instantly, I know that “you” meant you as in, a black-woman you. You is pointed at me from a mother who is also on edge and afraid of losing her Black child in the hands of law enforcement. “But mom! He needed to hear it!” I said, immediately annoyed, but silently recognizing that she was in fact right. Hanging up the phone after our conversation ended, I sat back in my seat and tried to get comfortable with the discomfort of inescapable injustice.
One and a half years later, I see that the seemingly small and insignificant actions of the immigration official and the fact that no White person stepped up to condemn his actions exhibit how Anti-blackness (the true pandemic) is the cornerstone of why White people, globally, are privileged.
In this way, White privilege is not having to put thought into encounters with law enforcement or even have them linger in your mind. White privilege is not having to have your mother worry about you from across the world because you stood up to police for their unfair and biased treatment. White privilege is believing the immigration official when he claims to not have profiled the Black person but only to have followed protocol. White privilege is being able to move throughout your vacations without anyone ever stopping you because you look suspicious.White privilege is not having to spend your life trying to read other people’s mind to understand on what level they are threatened or uncomfortable by your skin, hair, and body.
Letting the crowd of White people walk free that day while I stand there embarrassed and angry showed me that their White privilege passively allowed law enforcement to prioritize their comfort and safety at the cost of mine. In that sense, literally walking away when you see injustice between a person in power and Black person who does not deserve such unfair treatment, is catastrophic. This is exactly what we see protesters fighting for every night on CNN; for White people to stop ignoring us and to step up for our behalf. It is exactly why protesters are rising up and saying enough, when they see a White man hold his knee to a Black man’s throat while three other police officers do not say a word. That word could have saved George Floyd’s life. But the privilege for White people to not feel uncomfortable in any situation, was more important than preserving a life as well as a family and a nation that is heartbroken over these continued occurrences. I know that my experience with an immigration official simply checking my passport abroad does not at all compare to George Floyd or Breonna Taylor’s murder by police but it fundamentally highlights how this world has become so damaged by anti-blackness and White privilege never being checked. I also do not want this piece to paint me as purely being a victim, because I know my resilience has made me so much more than that. But I do want it to be used to understand how instances, seemingly unimportant to the White gaze, can actually be toxic and traumatic to Black people. The build up of countless experiences of micro-aggressions and blatant racism is why we are speaking out and demanding for change. Anti-Blackness, racism, hate are actions that must be openly and actively condemned by non-Black people if we want to make a change. White people must recognize each and every way that they are privileged in a global society and to act on that in order to make our lives more equal. So in order to for change to come, please do better — do not be passive, stand up for our rights.
