The Black Travel Movement: A Catalyst for Social Change

Abstract

In response to the underrepresentation of Black people in the travel sphere, Black travelers have created their presence in the market – authentically representing and providing opportunities for Black travelers. This group of Black travelers has taken on the collective name of the Black Travel Movement (BTM). Informed by social movement and critical race theory, nine interviews were conducted to better understand what influences BTM leaders in their quest for social change. Three emergent themes resulted: Catalysts Lead to Self-Efficacy, Awareness Leads to Consciousness Raising, and Community Activation Leads to Resource Mobilization. As evident from our interviews with BTM leaders, discrimination, bias, racism, and inequities are ubiquitous and continue to create inhospitable and toxic touristic experiences and landscapes for Black and people of color. However, results reveal a cyclical model that highlights hope through activism and community mobilization.

Dark Tourism and Social Mobilization: Transforming Travelers After Visiting a Holocaust Museum

“…Moreover, the Framing Theory of Social Action can be easily transferred to a broad diversity of contexts to examine the discourse of governments, organizations, leaders, and lay people (McClelland-Cohen and Endacott 2020). This ease of transferability is essential when considering that past studies on social mobilization tended to focus on organizations or leaders but seldom on travelers (Dillette and Benjamin 2022).…”

“…This finding also strengthens the conceptualization of prognostic framing (Lindstedt 2018) because it suggests a novel dynamic strategy where travelers intentionally manage their emotions based on their travel party’s knowledge and emotional state. Further, this finding provides important insights when considering that the travelers’ emotional labor is under-researched, especially when educating their own friends, children, and family about traumatic events central to their heritage (Dillette and Benjamin 2022). Dillette and Benjamin (2022) define emotional labor as Minority travelers’ “cause and fatigue from reliving their own traumatic experiences of persecution, while continuously acting as educators” (p. 11).…”

“…Further, this finding provides important insights when considering that the travelers’ emotional labor is under-researched, especially when educating their own friends, children, and family about traumatic events central to their heritage (Dillette and Benjamin 2022). Dillette and Benjamin (2022) define emotional labor as Minority travelers’ “cause and fatigue from reliving their own traumatic experiences of persecution, while continuously acting as educators” (p. 11). The concept of emotional labor originates from the service literature and initially focused on employees who have to constantly display positive emotions when interacting with clients, leading to emotional fatigue (Hochschild 2015).…”

“…Participants such as Nallah, Constance, and Tammy express that they engage in diagnostic framing through a schematic process where they identify relationships between how hatred and injustice relate to their personal biography, the way others perceive them, and their lived experience of major socio-political events. For example, Nallah employs diagnostic framing to express: While research focusing on diagnostic framing overwhelmingly investigates social mobilization from the perspectives of movement leaders, social media posts, and news coverage (Lindstedt 2018), sparse research look at how individual travelers voice their support for a cause (Dillette and Benjamin 2022). Participants such as Nallah, Lane, Jocelyn, and Nat suggest that their support for a cause deeply aligns with the intersectionality of their lived experience with injustice.…”

Representação e representatividade dos negros em uma revista de turismo de luxo do Brasil

“…Não se sabe quanto os viajantes afrobrasileiros consomem, para onde viajam, quais seus hábitos de consumo -informações já há tempos veiculadas no contexto estadunidense 1 . Por lá, a despeito dos autores que se debruçam sobre turismo e relações raciais denunciem que há poucas investigações sobre o tema (Carter, 2008;Dillette, 2021;Stephenson & Hughes, 2005), pesquisas voltadas aos viajantes afro-americanos são realizadas desde a década de 1990 (Philipp, 1994) e têm se intensificado com o Black Travel Moviment e com as Black Travel Tribes 2 , movimentos nascidos a partir da necessidade que os afro-americanos sentiram em se verem representados no turismo, criando um espaço de apoio e conexão (Dillette, 2021;Dillette & Benjamin, 2021). Kilomba (2019) explica que o racismo transforma corpos negros em corpos impróprios, isto é, aqueles que estão "fora do lugar" e, por essa razão, corpos que não podem pertencer.…”