When Does a Person of Color Get to Be an Expat?
Around the world, the term is often synonymous with White people from affluent countries.
I’m Black. I’m Hispanic. I’m a woman.
And I’m an American who has lived “outside their native country” in Cameroon, Costa Rica, and now Istanbul, Turkey. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this makes me an expatriate, or expat.
But I wrestle with the term, not because of its textbook definition, but because of its nuance.
Expat is often synonymous with White people from affluent countries, mostly because they’ve traditionally chosen to self-identify this way. The word conjures up images of British aesthetes in Tangier, or American and European retirees in a take-your-pick of tropical paradises. And more recently, multinational executives in post-colonial states and internat...