{"id":43673,"date":"2022-05-11T17:08:50","date_gmt":"2022-05-11T21:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/culturechstage.wpengine.com\/?p=41761"},"modified":"2022-10-13T12:16:27","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T16:16:27","slug":"for-the-culture-travel-advisory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/for-the-culture-travel-advisory\/","title":{"rendered":"Travel Advisory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Di Dove Sei Originaria?<\/span><\/h3>\n

A<\/span>s a Black woman navigating a very\u2026homogenized industry, I must be aware that there are many places where my Blackness isn\u2019t appreciated. I\u2019m intentional in my travels, research potential accommodations, and take care of which neighborhoods I visit. I don\u2019t like surprises, and since I often travel alone or am the only Black person in a work group, I have to be aware of my surroundings. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In October 2019 I was sent on a work trip to the World Cheese Awards in Bergamo, Italy. Thrilled didn\u2019t begin to describe it\u2014My first job out of culinary school was for a James Beard\u2013nominated chef at an Italian restaurant. I moved to Chicago to work at Spiagga, a Michelin-starred Italian restaurant\u2014I was finally going to Italy; It was porcini mushroom season and winter white truffle season, and I was going to the WORLD CHEESE AWARDS! I was going to be surrounded by cheese lovers and get to try cheeses I\u2019d never even heard of. I was going to \u201cLive, Laugh, Love\u201d the heck out of this trip.<\/span><\/p>\n

My employer put me up in a nice hotel in Milan. I often traveled with a fluent Italian speaker. I booked first class seats on the trains, and I was determined to not fall into the \u201cugly American\u201d stereotype. None of that mattered, though. Everywhere I went I was asked the same question.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere are you from?\u201d<\/p>\n

This was an accusation, not curiosity. It took me longer than I want to admit to recognize the hostility. As a person who tries to create safe spaces for herself and for others, I wasn\u2019t prepared for the racism and exclusion faced by African immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. This is not the brand of hate I usually receive. In the US, while I might not be the expected face in the cheese industry, my citizenship is never called into question. In fact, I doubt most people think about it at all when looking at me. I think it is generally assumed that as a Black woman I am a descendent of enslaved people and so I \u201cbelong\u201d to the United States. No one asks me, \u201cWhere are you from? No, where are you really from?\u201d as they do to other People of Color. <\/span><\/p>\n

In Italy I was asked this question everywhere I went. Cabbies asked, the person at the cafe asked; I was asked while getting gelato, while buying a train ticket. It was constant. Body language shifted dramatically when I told them I was an American. I could see the tension drop from their shoulders as they let out the breath they were holding. I had more than one person tell me how happy they were that I wasn\u2019t one of \u201cthose Africans<\/i>.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But I am one of \u201cthose Africans<\/i>.\u201d I am also one of those Bajans. I\u2019m one of those Queens girls who gets the beef patty and skips the coco bread. I am made of oxtail and butter beans from the Caribbean, southern cornbread, and black-eyed peas. I am part government cheese on no-name white bread, and I\u2019m $50-a-pound Rogue River Blue. I\u2019m perfectly al dente risotto Milanese, and I am a whole bowl of melt-in-your-mouth ricotta gnocchi. I am all these things and more, but I am none of these things without being at my core one of \u201cthose Africans<\/i>\u201d.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to go back to Italy one day. There\u2019s so much I haven\u2019t seen, so many foods I have yet to try. I\u2019m just going to be better prepared. If someone asks me where I\u2019m from I\u2019ll tell them that I\u2019m African, by way of Barbados, Panama, and Queens.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Di Dove Sei Originaria? As a Black woman navigating a very\u2026homogenized industry, I must be aware that there are many places where my Blackness isn\u2019t appreciated. I\u2019m intentional in my travels, research potential accommodations, and take care of which neighborhoods I visit. I don\u2019t like surprises, and since I often travel alone or am the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":43632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27966],"tags":[27967,3869,18488,26347,26348],"coauthors":[27956],"class_list":["post-43673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cheese-for-the-culture","tag-agela-abdullah","tag-cheese-travel","tag-food-travel","tag-racism","tag-racism-in-cheese"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTravel Advisory - culture: the word on cheese<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/for-the-culture-travel-advisory\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Travel Advisory\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Di Dove Sei Originaria? As a Black woman navigating a very\u2026homogenized industry, I must be aware that there are many places where my Blackness isn\u2019t appreciated. I\u2019m intentional in my travels, research potential accommodations, and take care of which neighborhoods I visit. 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