The Western Privilege

In my quest to travel across the land of Europe, I have been scourging the net to get stories of black women (evidently, all of whom are American) who have travelled and what their experiences of Europe were. Some stories were good, some were terrible, but what was consistent in all of them was the change in perception by some Europeans when they discovered that the women were from the States. This became famously coined as the ‘American privilege’. I can understand this, because they came from arguably the most powerful country in the world, however, I found some of the blogs written to be slightly arrogant in the sense that all black people who are able to travel should be thankful to these African Americans for they helped to change the negative perception of black people. The fact of the matter is that any black person who can speak well, has a good job and education is a shock to most Europeans. Rather than seeing it as an American privilege, it should been seen as the ‘Western Privilege’ whereby black people, who have been fortunate enough to excel in their respective career paths in the wealthy western countries and are culturally aware are seen in a positive light.

Peace