The open road isn’t always open
The dangers of discrimination remain all too vivid.
If there’s one thing the people behind car and RV companies, state tourism boards, national and state parks and hotels agree on right now, it’s that the summer of 2020 will be the summer of the road trip.
With the country reopening, travel industry experts say people are planning short trips to destinations relatively close to home. By driving they can control the number of people they interact with, how many stops they make on the way and whether to take a detour or not — all things they can’t control on a plane.
“I’ve always loved the freedom of the road trip,” one hotel owner said in an email in April. “It feels familiar, nostalgic and very American. Now, more than ever, when we are allowed to travel again, we expect to see families, friends and couples jumping into their cars and hitting the open road.”
For many Black travellers, however, the road trip has long conjured fear, not freedom. Victor Hugo Green published the first version of his now-famous “Green Book” in 1936; it listed towns, motels, restaurants and homes where Black drivers were welcome and would be safe. At the time, state and local laws enforced racial segregation, primarily in the South, a racial caste system known as Jim Crow that was legally undone by the passage of Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s. The “Green Book” was updated and published through the 1960s and inspired the 2018 film of the same name that won an Oscar but was widely criticized.
And while white travellers might convince themselves that the dangers the “Green Book” addressed have faded — places where there is a high likelihood of being stopped by the police or being harassed by fellow travellers, or where it could be fatal to be seen after sundown — for many Black travellers these dangers remain all too vivid. Following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of the police, and Ahmaud Arbery at the hands of armed white residents, and coming on the heels of the coronavirus and its heavy toll — both in terms of health and employment — on AfricanAmericans, some Black travellers worry that they will face even more discrimination on the road this summer.
“Travel is supposed to be a reprieve from all the hard things we are usually dealing with, but it often doesn’t feel that way for us,” said Damon Lawrence, cofounder of Homage Hospitality Group, a hotel company that draws inspiration for its properties from Black history and caters particularly to Black travellers. “Having to constantly be on high alert adds extra anxiety, and it’s always hard, but right now, it’s an exhausting task to even leave the house, let alone go on a road trip.”
Lawrence, like many other African-Americans, said that he always shares his location with friends and family on his phone so that someone can check in and know where he is.
“If something goes wrong, I need someone to know where I am or where I’ve been,” he said.
A lot of planning and no detours Nisha Parker, a special-education teacher in Bakersfield,
Calif., loves to drive and doesn’t want to allow fear about what could go wrong to stop her. She also wants her two children to see America’s landscapes, she said. So this summer her family will drive across the country from their hometown to New York.
But Parker, 32, said that she can’t imagine just being able to pack up and go without a plan, like some white families might be able to do.
So for the past six months, she has been meticulously planning their journey. She knows which towns her family will stop in, which they’ll drive straight through, and which they’ll avoid entirely. She also knows which stretches of the road her children won’t be allowed to drink juice or water on, to avoid bathroom breaks in towns where the family could encounter racism or violence based on their race.
“We try not to stop in places that are desolate, and we try to only stop in cities for gas,” she said. “If we have to stop for gas in a rural area, we use a debit card so we don’t have to go into the gas station store. If we are going to stay somewhere overnight, we look at the demographics to make sure we aren’t going to a place where we would be the only Black people or where we would be targeted, especially at night.”
Parker grew up road tripping with family between New York and North Carolina, and her parents took similar precautions. She and her husband have also considered getting a dashboard camera so that if they are stopped by police and things turn deadly there is some record of it.
In a way, Facebook groups for
Black travellers and group chats have become the 21stcentury version of the “Green Book.” People talk about where they’ve been and follow in each other’s footsteps, sharing where they were treated well and where they felt uncomfortable or unsafe. Many stay in the same hotels, eat at the same restaurants or skip the same towns.
Monica Jackson, a medical biller for a hospital network in Texas, said that she loves to drive but as a rule will not go on a trip that requires driving for more than six hours so that she doesn’t have to consider spending the night in a town where she could be targeted for being Black.
Deadly police stops Jackson, 42, said that she feels anxious when she passes through areas — including Texas’s Williamson and Denton counties — where she’s had unnerving interactions with white police officers.
“I always feel worried on the road in some counties because I’ve been stopped for no reason,” she said. “I always pray and say, ‘OK, Lord please protect me. I don’t want to end up in jail for no reason.’ It’s always in the back of my mind that I could be the next Sandra Bland.”
Bland was a vocal civil rights activist who was found hanged in a Texas jail cell in July 2015 after she was arrested during a traffic stop.
Brian Oliver, founder of BMore See More, a non-profit that works with Black male students and encourages them to travel, said that he used to be worried about driving in the Deep South, but videos of Black men being killed by the police or targeted by white Americans have shown him that racist violence can occur anywhere.
“There used to be a sense of some places being less safe for Black people, but from seeing the news lately, I don’t think there’s any place that’s guaranteed to be safe for us,” he said.
Lawrence of Homage Hospitality said that a desire to make Black travellers feel welcome and able to relax without worrying that someone might call the police on them simply for checking in was one of the main reasons he created his company.
The right to be on the road Jeff Jenkins, a travel blogger who runs Chubby Diaries, a travel company for plus-size people, said that his anxiety about being targeted by the police ran so deep that it affected his choice of car. The recent killings of Black men by the police have only added to his anxiety.
“I go for soccer-mom cars because they seem to be less intimidating to the police,” he said. “A typical sedan or something that sort of just says, ‘I’m safe and boring, don’t look at me.’”
Jenkins, 34, is planning on driving from Austin, Texas, to visit several national parks this summer, he said, adding that in recent weeks he has become “an RV savant.”
“These opportunities, these parks, these roads are meant for me as well,” Jenkins said.
“They are not meant to just be shared with one ethnicity. I have pride that this is my country, and I have every right to bask in the wonders of America, like any white American.”