The staring is a mixed bag.
Like AntonioR pointed out, sometimes it's favorable ... but for the most part, it's a dehumanizing tool of objectification.
I've been to Mexico in the early 70s, but would not go now.
It's not the same country and from the attitudes I get when I'm around border towns in Texas and Arizona .. WHY would I go there??
BUT ... African Americans are not a monolithic people ... and neither are most people throughout the world.
I think it's more of a person's ... "Personality Type."
We take who we are wherever we go.
I've known educated brothers who went to Russia on NGO missions who caught hell ... and I've seen idiots from the projects put up videos from Russia where they are having a BALL!
((lol))
If I carry a lot of Generational or personal trauma ... or even internalized oppression (Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome), then it's going to color how I see the world and my vibrations are going to attract victim-martyr experiences regardless where I travel.
Likewise .. and I hate to say it... the world has become a LOT more Narcissistic in the last 30 years.
Some cultures are simply more Narcissistic ... macho... than others.
So people I've noticed that the more narcissistic a black person is, the more they're drawn to macho narcissistic people and places. (Not good for insecure people or people who are simply over sensitive.)
There's another theme here ...
And that's the "American" part of African-Americans.
Culturally it's said that,
"...Americans spend $4 billion dollars traveling the world in search of someplace where people will love us-- yet we refuse to speak to the neighbor who lives right next door."
(of course this isn't everyone... but be real...)
On the whole, travel really expands a person's scope of the world and of themselves.
But blacks need to know THEIR history before they travel anywhere.
Take for instance Spain.
Western ... "European" slavery started in Spain.
Why?
Europe was in the grip of a mini Ice Age. Food riots where popping up. The Pope created the Inquisition and blamed women for being witches. (The terrorist of the day.) They also burned and tortured anyone who thought differently or could possibly incite insurrection against the Status Quo.
Pope Innocent also called the two good Catholic nations of Portugal and England together and told them to take the good ship Jesus into Africa and do whatever they needed to do to subjugate Africans into slavery because they needed the wealth and they needed something to put the focus on rather than poverty Vs. the greedy aristocracy.
This was huge because when you travel to southern Spain... especially the Iberian Cost, you're witnessing a part of the world that once was African. They may have stared at you because even today, there are rich and wealthy Moorish (black) families remaining on the Iberian Coast because it was Africans and Arabs who brought Europe out of the Dark Ages and established the first universities on the European continent. They were INVITED in and ruled for 700 (some say 900) years. It's why the Mediterranean countries have their olive skin. (Likewise, earlier, we can see trade and interaction created mixed ethnic genes with Ethiopians, some Somalis (ancient Kush), and Northern Africa.
Arabs really put the knife in the back of Africans by starting the sub-Saharan Slave Trade, but Europe, led by Spain and Portugal, made it flourish. (Just ONE of the reason why I feel no black person to spend dime on tourism to an Arab country. We earn over a trillion dollars annually. If Black Americans were a nation, we'd be somewhere between the 10th and 14th wealthiest. In African nations that you visit... you don't get stared at...)
Karma is a bytch and today, poor Portugal gets much needed economic aid from Angola and Spain continues to struggle economically--although far better than Portugal.
Brazil... as we know... more Africans were taken to South America than to North America and even today, it is a deeply racially divided nation when it comes to economics. (not sex) Some people are so anxious for love that we idealize and forget that people are people wherever you go. Ain't no different planet you're traveling to. In Brazil, you're still going to have to learn the language and be viewed by the content of your character. Ain't no "instant love bag" for tricks. A trick is a trick everywhere on earth.
So I believe people should go where they're called.
It may take decades to "cook" the experience and mine what was seen in those "3 weeks in Madrid."
The goal in life is to learn to love oneself so completely (NOT Narcissistically) that the soul opens to The Divine instead of the mind/ego. That's where we can then, "love our neighbor as ourselves."
Otherwise, we're trying to find our way out of the worm hole of "self" ... of "pride" ... lust, jealousy, and the rest of the 7 Deadly Sins.
Go... but study all sides of why you're attracted to a place first.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
the staring is B.S.
