Tweeting The Black Travel Experience: Social Media Counter-Narrative Stories as Innovative Insight on #TravelingWhileBlack

African Americans in the United States have long since been confronted with harassment and discrimination while traveling due to segregated lodging, restaurants, and other leisure activities. However, African Americans/Blacks are one of the fastest growing tourist groups. This work builds on previous research on the Black travel experience analyzing over three hundred tweets using the hashtag #travelingwhileblack through a Critical Race Theory (CRT) lens. By analyzing how Black tourists are traveling, this study reveals how experiential knowledge of Black travelers can contribute to the learning environment of the tourism industry. Three emergent themes were identified: (1) occurrences of racism (2) awareness of being Black while traveling and (3) meaningful experiences traveling while Black, suggesting that experiential knowledge of travelers of color brings different perspectives, that will hopefully, move toward eliminating all forms of subordination and create a more just society