‘Black people travel, too’ - Friends start blog to dispel misconceptions

Chanice Williams and her partner Peteray Bennett love to travel.

Even though she works as a recreational director at an adult home and he is a nurse, they create time to travel and enjoy themselves.

In their opinion, black people are not represented well when it comes to images of world travel, so they decided to launch Black Millennial Travels blog, highlighting that black people take time off to travel around the world and to experience different cultures and ways of life.

“A lot of companies advertise for the demographics that are not black, even though we spend a lot of time travelling. We wanted to create a page and post photos of people, particularly black people, and just show others that we do travel. We are showing others that we are going to all parts of the world, Asia, Europe, the Caribbean; that we are here and we do exist,” she said.

The St Ann native said that since January, they have met with people in the US, where Bennett now resides, on travel brunches in order to create a network and form connections with black people who share similar travel interests.

But travelling is not the only aspect that Williams is focusing on. She wants people to not only enjoy themselves, but to understand about charity and giving back.

“We believe travelling is very educational because it enables you to be open-minded towards other people and other cultures. We go in schools and talk about it, and give out passport application forms and all that,” she said.

Even though Williams and Bennett are currently US citizens, she said her platform is open to anyone who wants to be a part of it, and they would often advertise their travel plans so that people who are interested may come with them.

Williams and Bennett have been travel blogging for two years together and they want people to experience and appreciate the world.

“The goal is to educate people that it is affordable to travel and in that way, they can get rid of their mindset that it is too expensive, (or) they cannot afford it. We know that people have bills to pay and children to take care of, so we partner with a travel agency. So if you want to go somewhere with us and you don’t have the full airfare, our travel agent allows you to pay per month, whereas if you go a travel website, you have to pay all of it at once,” she said.

She made sure to note that they are not a travel agency, and that there is no membership fee, nor do people need to pay to follow them.

“You can sign up for alerts to be a part of our group trips, but it’s not like a membership, you are not paying per month. It is just a platform that allows us to highlight cultures and show black people travelling,” she said.