THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED
Podcaster reveals issues she faces as a black woman
Influencers are seen as having a lot of clout in the travel industry these days.
Their ranks include Oneika Raymond, known as Oneika the Traveller, who’s been to more than 100 countries. She blogs and Instagrams about travel and hosts two Travel Channel shows on Facebook: Big City, Little Budget and One Bag and You’re Out.
But Raymond also broaches complex issues that aren’t always covered by mainstream travel media, including what it’s like to travel as a black woman and how, as an influencer, she tries to balance transparency while promoting the destination she’s hired to represent.
Raymond shared tips and thoughts in the latest episode of Travel’s weekly Get Outta Here! podcast. Here are some excerpts, edited for brevity and clarity.
TRAVELLING AS A BLACK WOMAN
Raymond hashtags some of her posts #blackgirlmagic. She also acknowledges that black travellers may face some unique challenges.
“If I travel to places where they don’t have a large black population, I get a lot of stares,” she said. “I get people trying to touch my hair and touch my skin and take pictures in a way that many white travellers may not have experienced ... So I get a lot of attention in places like China or India, where local people have not had as much contact with black people.”
How does she respond?
“I am so used to it that I actually enjoy engaging with people,” she said. “We travel because we want to discover. That is what fuels me every time I go on the road. When I encounter these situations where people are very interested or attracted to me because of the way I look, or because of the differences in the way I look, I am really happy to have that dialogue and to engage with them . ... We are both learning. I am learning about their culture and they’re learning about me and by proxy my culture.”
LET THE LOCALS TELL THEIR OWN STORIES
Raymwond takes issue with the all-too-familiar photos of white travellers posing with local children on voluntourism trips.
“When we go somewhere, we are visitors in someone else’s home and we need to be respectful of that,” she said. “I’m very sensitive to the optics of a Western traveller going to a developing country and showing images of people from that developing country without necessarily having their consent ... As privileged Western travellers, we fall into the trap of framing the narrative instead of letting the people in the place we’re in share their own stories of their own culture and frame their own narrative.”