Getaway.
So in spite of the fact that it’s August and few people are answering their phones or replying to emails — even if they are in their offices — I’ve been juggling four different projects, a nap-striking Scamp, and physical therapy for my wrist (tenosynovitis, y’all — avoid at all costs), which is why I’ve been pokey with the posts for the past couple of weeks. But the MotherSister Posse is about to bail out of Brooklyn to spend a few days on a beach in Rhode Island, and this has me thinking about how and where black folks vacation.
When I was on staff as a travel guidebook editor, one of my obligatory biannual proposals was for a modest series of city guidebooks for black travelers. Such proposals require hard numbers pointing to proven successes; squishy intangibles and gut feelings don’t make a P&L work. But as Dale Grenier puts it in “Homegirl on the Range,” an essay published in Go Girl! The Black Woman’s Book of Travel & Adventure: “White travelers will never understand the complex dynamics that affect the travel experiences of their black brothers and sisters. Why? Because most white people can move about this land freely without anyone batting an eye or questioning (with a look, an action, or a remark) their right to be in any place at any time.” (Rebecca Solnit also touches on the challenges that blacks, women, and other groups have faced in roaming freely in her excellent book, Wanderlust: A History of Walking.) There are a few magazines and websites, but many black travelers I know still work their personal networks in deciding where to vacation and what to see and do while they’re visiting (even if they buy a guidebook as well). It’ll be interesting to see if any mainstream travel guidebook publisher ever ventures to capture this market.
There have been middle-class black vacation resorts like Idlewild, and, for the wealthy, there’s still Martha’s Vineyard and Sag Harbor, but I don’t really know of any beyond that. Movies like Matty Rich’s The Inkwell and books like Dorothy West’s The Wedding, Toni Morrison’s Love, and Jill Nelson’s Finding Martha’s Vineyard all offer windows into these havens, but I’m still waiting for a more contemporary, youthful take on existing communities. Would we buy a vacation home in one (real estate prices willing) and go there every year? I don’t know; I like keeping our options open. In the end, when deciding where to go this summer, we did what millions of other people do these days: started researching online and, on the basis of some alluring photographs, forked over some cash for a promise of a week’s respite in a cottage with a garden on a private beach, where The Scamp could run around naked underneath his superhero cape. There’s always the uncertainty of being a stranger in a strange land wherever you go, but I’m thinking the sand and the sun and the ocean will pay us no never mind.