[Huff Post via Yahoo] Devon Kitzo-Creed, a 28-year-old African American woman, always planned on leaving the United States to live abroad. Definitely before she had children, but probably not until she was in her 30s.
2020 pushed up her timeline.
Now she and her husband, who live in Wilmington, Delaware, are planning on relocating to Ecuador right after the election. She'll continue her work as a doula and childbirth educator. He can work remotely as a video editor and animator.
Why the rush? "The way things have gone this year, the political climate of our country, and just the way that I do not feel valued at all in this country," Kitzo-Creed explained.
The day before Kitzo-Creed spoke to HuffPost, a Kentucky grand jury declined to indict police officers for murder after they shot and killed Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, inside her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment.
That no one would face justice for the death of an innocent woman sent a familiar message to Kitzo-Creed: This country doesn't care about Black people.
"It's like the Black woman really is the most disrespected, disregarded person in America," she said, echoing a Malcolm X quote made even more famous by Beyoncé. "So, I'm leaving."
Kitzo-Creed is part of a group of African American professionals looking to leave, or who have already left, the United States. HuffPost spoke to several who said they were fed up with the daily drumbeat of racism, discrimination at work, the hostility of police officers, the fear of doing even the most mundane tasks.
Kitzo-Creed recalled how just this summer, she was getting followed around the grocery store. Another man recounted how a police car followed him at night just recently, sending his heart racing. A woman recalled asking a repairman at her home to put on a mask because of the pandemic. He told her, "We won't need to do this after Trump wins the election."
Almost every Black professional HuffPost spoke with had a story about a tense encounter with the police. Several said that the killings of Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery (shot while jogging), and George Floyd (killed by a police officer who kept a knee on his neck for eight minutes) were crystallizing moments.
While there is no hard data on the number of African Americans who live abroad or intend to move, anecdotally, discussions about whether to stick around in the U.S. are increasing ‐ particularly among college-educated, relatively well-off Black Americans. USA Today and Condé Nast Traveler noted the trend in August. And after the presidential debate last month, Google saw an increase in searches for how to move to Canada.
It isn't just politics and police violence, though. Everyone talked about the pandemic. "The shift really came this year with the pandemic," said Sienna Brown, a 28-year-old African American woman who moved to Spain six years ago and now runs an online community for women who are interested in moving abroad. She said that initially, she mostly heard from women looking to travel internationally. Now it's women who want to leave....
[Don't let the turnstyle hit you in the rear on your way out (but of course, you won't really leave, will you?).]
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