Navdeep Singh Dhillon and Sona Charaipotra of IshqInABackpack recently facilitated a workshop at the New York Travel Festival on ‘Cultural Supremacy in Travel Media’. Intrigued by their recent blog articles on race and travel blogging, Desi Globetrotter got in touch and an interview unfolded.
All too often conversations around race, class and privilege, in relation to travel and travel writing, are left out from discussions by travel media. It’s important to create avenues for dialogue and open discussion around these issues. Desi Globetrotter aims to not only deliver original travel content to readers, it also aims to challenge the status quo by looking at the travel blogging community from all angles, whether it’s through showcasing a diversity of voices from the South Asian travel community through guest articles, sharing curated travel news, or by chasing thought-provoking interviews with interesting, intelligent travel bloggers who don’t mince words.
Like Navdeep and Sona.
Navdeep is an adjunct professer in New York City, where he teaches university courses such as English composition, Film and Literature, and Creative Writing. He holds an MFA in fiction and is also working on a novel. Navdeep was born in England, raised in East and West Africa, the Middle East, and the United States. He was a linguist in the U.S. Navy, where he served for eight years, has taught ESL in China for two years, traveled extensively throughout South East Asia, and speaks several languages.
Sona Charaipotra is a New York City-based journalist and author of newly published teen novel Tiny Pretty Things. She has written for Cosmopolitan, the New York Times, People, TeenPeople, American Way, Modern Bride, and loads of other print publications. She has blogged for CafeMom, Mom.me, and MSN. She graduated with a Masters degree in screenwriting from N.Y.U., went on to earn an MFA in Writing for Children from the New School. She was born in Iran, and raised in New Jersey. Before meeting Navdeep, she had only traveled in air-conditioned trains with family in various parts of Delhi.
In Conversation
Q1: I’ve read your article “The White Travel Blogger Darlings and the Organizers Who Love Them” in response to the mostly white Travel Blogger Summit at the White House in 2014. You’re candid in calling out racism, unchecked white privilege and entitlement in the travel blogging industry. In your opinion, what can aspiring bloggers of colour do to break down some of these barriers while still participating and building connections in the industry?
Navdeep: “The best thing Bloggers of Colour can do is produce great writing. Develop your brand. Then connect with brands if that’s your thing, take your time before you start going to conferences and address these issues when they occur. Too often, we see bloggers who immediately want to make money and connect with brands way too early. This simply perpetuates the system because those bloggers aren’t going to call out racism or sexism in any meaningful way because that would mean biting the hand that feeds them. We don’t have that problem and the bloggers who discuss these issues don’t either because they know even if they do lose a sponsor for being candid, they have a loyal fan base that will support them. When you chase money and brands, your voice and content gets diluted. The inevitable alternative to not addressing these issues is to let it be normalized making it that much harder for the next blogger of colour. That is the situation today.
Our advice would be to be true to your vision of your blog, but also to keep in mind that this is a community, and a conversation about the unequal distribution of power is the only way things will change. Ignoring a problem will never result in anything positive.”
Q2: For those who may counter your points with ‘there’s not enough influencers of colour with high traffic blogs, or that race has nothing to do with it – it’s just a coincidence – the blogs just have too broad of a niche or too narrow of a niche to warrant enough of an investment by tourism boards and conferences’, what would you say to them?
Navdeep: “I would probably tell them that’s a load of horse shit. It used to be the only way to get travel stories into the hands of readers was through books and print newspapers or magazines. The gatekeepers – the editors and publishers, were mostly all white and male. With social media and the internet, it has theoretically created more diverse voices, but the gatekeepers are all still white. The tools of liberation are also the same tools of oppression and the internet is proving to be both. Organizers of major travel blogging conferences, to folks curating lists of “best” travel blogs or travel books, are all white, with some individual exceptions. This means even though we’re (POC) are out there blogging, building a community of readers, we don’t fit the narrative of a ‘white woman quits corporate job to find herself in brown country’, or ‘white guy quits job to go save natives’, and ‘while ignoring issues of race, class and money, here’s how you can do it too’.
Take, for example, coverage of Ebola in one country in Africa that served to represent the entire continent with posts by white bloggers talking about whether you should travel to Africa like it’s a country. We’re supposed to believe that in the entire continent of Africa, there aren’t ANY bloggers who have numbers and the only travel bloggers for Africa are all white, middle class, and mostly American? Or India’s horrific rape and suddenly it’s an epidemic, where we must hear what middle class white bloggers who spent some time in India have to say about it. Not like India has any travel bloggers with vast numbers of readers. But when America has systematic incidents of police brutality or rape, or murder, or mass shootings, these are thought of as isolated incidents, not representative of the entire country.
There are many travel communities that dispel the notion there aren’t influencers of colour with high traffic. Nomadness Tribe has 8,000 members, who are mostly people of colour, and Travel Noire has large numbers as well. Many tourism boards have seen the potential and are creating campaigns specifically targeting black travelers. The problem isn’t that there aren’t enough influencers, it’s that the perception that the default traveler is white and that’s who the mythical demographic corporations are marketing towards. Travelers of colour aren’t suddenly traveling; and we certainly aren’t suddenly writing about travel. We’ve been writing and traveling longer than Europeans have.”
Q3: What has been one of your main challenges as travel bloggers of colour? What advice would you give to young, aspiring travel bloggers who want to take it a step further than just a hobby?
“Our main challenge as travel bloggers has been to hold on to our vision. We know bloggers who had original voices when they started and as soon as they started receiving endorsements, their posts became less about funny, pointless stories about their misadventures, and more about product reviews and transparent sponsored blog posts solely for the purpose of getting free stuff. Really work on developing your voice and the values of your blog, not as a business, but as a reflection of you as a person.
Know who you are, so you know what you are selling when you partner with brands, or you may end up becoming a corporate mouthpiece. As travel bloggers of colour, the challenge is to actually be a community. We see ourselves as individuals and when we get some privilege in an inherently unjust system, whether it’s through being invited to speak at conferences, or being listed on travel blogs, we tend to forget about the community. That’s a major challenge because those things are nice. And we have found that much of the opposition comes from other travel bloggers of colour, who have some form of privilege within this system. All you can do is focus on engaging in a genuine conversation and community building.”
Q4: Have you come across racism while you’ve travelled? What are some of the lessons you have learned?
Navdeep: “Racism is often thought of as something only very blatant, where racial slurs are a required criterion. Institutionalized racism in our own countries and our own privilege within the system provides a nice little bubble, so it makes it much more pronounced when we see overt forms of racism practiced more openly when we travel. In China, I was fired from my job as an ESL teacher twenty minutes after arriving from the airport because I didn’t “look” like I spoke English. They told me flat out they wanted a Caucasian teacher and many job postings ask for these specific “qualifications” without mincing words. In Eastern Europe, I traveled with a Nigerian friend and heard some horrific things mostly directed towards him. In India, we’ve been to guesthouses run by Indians, where they wanted white foreigners and refused to give us a room!
When we first traveled together as a couple, we naively didn’t really think about race being a factor in our travels to India – a country where people look like us. But the tentacles of colonialism are everywhere, evident in the immense popularity and normalization of skin lightening products endorsed by major celebrities. Even a line just for men!
Many guidebooks are written by white people or with white ideological values, so when they write something about “foreigners” in China being treated like celebrities and people wanting to take photos with them, or are curious about their hair and skin, this is mostly directed at white people. This never ever happens to brown people. Black people sometimes have this experience, but they also have experiences where kids and adults will try to rub the black off their skin, or refer to their skin as dirty. That is not an experience white travelers have. It’s silly to avoid countries because someone had a racist experience there or there are reports of violence against a particular race. Our own countries aren’t the utopias we think they are, in our little bubbles of privilege, either. Our advice is to be aware of where you’re going and use your common sense, as you would at home.”
Sona: “And there are plenty of stand-out moments in India itself – like when we stayed at the Golden Temple. If they think you’re Indian from India, you get one standard of room (a very poor standard). But don your jeans and your American accent, and it’s a suite with private bath and balcony. And when we called a particular hotel in Puri and spoke in Hindi, we were told there was no space available. But calling two minutes later and asking for the same dates in American English, we got “the last room available.” Complete with an ocean view. The reverse works, too, of course. When we went to the Taj Mahal, we dressed in Desi clothes, and I let Navdeep do all the talking, so we got the local rate, instead of the foreigner price that costs 20 times as much.”
Q5: There are many South Asian blogs and digital magazines online catering to a niche market focused on South Asian culture, Desi Globetrotter included. Whether it’s through fashion, beauty, Bollywood, weddings, travel and food, South Asian bloggers from India, UK, US, Canada and beyond are writing about these topics through a South Asian lens. On one hand, this helps bridge the gap by creating unique content specific to this group –content not found in the mainstream.
However, do you think by separating blogs by race, it may actually perpetuate systemic racism further or do you think this type of unique targeted content is the future of blogging and content creation?
Navdeep: “People like to use a lot of coded language when discussing race. Mainstream is code for white media represented everywhere. White American cultural values are exported globally through movies, tv shows, and beauty standards. Niches outside of this lens are important to create a normalization of these values and engage in a furthering of the conversation. With most editors of U.S. and U.K. media outlets being white, Indian fashion and South Asian culture is not going to be featured in “mainstream” media unless its through a white lens, where it is exoticized or fetishized, not treated with much complexity. “Indian wedding” or “Indian fashion trend” would seek to represent the entire country or continent. Without these specific spaces and niches, it is improbable to see issues affecting our communities found in any meaningful way in “mainstream” media, if at all. In South Asian media, issues can be discussed in depth, without overly defining or contextualizing or explaining things.
The internet can be a great step towards creating a more balanced view of the world, empowering individuals, building communities, and creating media platforms. Just a few years ago, nobody would have thought being a South Asian fashion blogger was feasible, or that a target audience of South Asians was viable. All it takes to start a change is one individual and a ripple effect ensues, leading to more voices, and eventually genuine change.”
Sona: “I agree – there is a place for “niche” blogs, like ones that focus on Desi culture and content specifically. But that doesn’t mean your voice shouldn’t be heard in the bigger blogosphere. The Internet is the great equalizer. You start your own site, you have the numbers (or the content) to prove yourself, and you can go viral. You can create your own little space to tell the stories you want, and you can connect with likeminded souls – brown or not – who want to read and share and discuss. There’s room for everyone. It’s about creating a space for yourself and not limiting yourself either.”
For more information on Navdeep and Sona, please visit www.ishqinabackpack.com.
What are your thoughts on race and travel blogging? Leave your comments below.
Photo Credit: IshqInABackpack
