Black travelers, along with clothes and toiletries, make sure to load up on patience — mostly to help survive the gawking that comes during a journey. Sometimes the ogling is borne of admiration. Black culture is a global export. But, more often, it’s a suspicious and fear-based reaction rooted in media tropes. Either way, the unsolicited attention — and the emotional toll it takes — shapes our travel in ways that are at once profound and peculiar.

Few journalists better capture this complexity than Nancy Ancrum, who, starting today, launches Black on the Road, a monthly column that reflects on what it “might mean to be Black out of our context, out of our individual comfort — and discomfort — zones at home.” Nancy’s column, which seamlessly blends travel reporting and cultural commentary, adds yet another powerful layer to the lens that DETOUR has fixed at the intersection of place and race.

We’re thrilled! In Nancy Ancrum, along with our own private translator of head-scratching Florida politics, DETOUR gets to showcase a savvy Black journalist with a knack for storytelling, a passion for travel and a perspective bound to enlighten all our journeys. When she’s not writing for DETOUR, Nancy is busy as an Op-Ed Editor at the Miami Herald, which is published by our partner McClatchy.

Check out this nugget from Nancy piece today: “…It was a typical day in Skopje, Macedonia, where the locals tugged on the dreadlocks draped behind my back just to get the feel of them; where a young man selling tea at the bazaar commandeered his friend to take a picture of the two of us, and once accomplished, high-fived the Johnny-on-the-spot photographer. He didn’t offer me any tea, though.” Please join me in welcoming Nancy Ancrum to DETOUR. You can read her column in its entirety here.