More Black Americans are ditching the United States for a better quality of life abroad. Black people are not a monolith, so the reasons vary. One overarching theme for many Black Americans choosing to build a life overseas, however, is that they’re tired of racism and discrimination in their home country.
While Black folks have been doing this for the last few decades –– such as W.E.B. DuBois, James Baldwin, and Josephine Baker, the Blaxit movement was hard to miss in 2016. Taking a play on words from the name Brexit, which was given to the United Kingdom’s decision to depart from the European Union, Blaxit refers to Black people leaving the United States to start life in another country. When leaders in Ghana announced the “Year of the Return” campaign for 2019, inviting African descendants to “come back” home and reconnect with their roots during what marked 400 years since the first enslaved Africans arrived in America, it inspired more Black Americans to reconsider life in places such as Ghana.
The deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor energized Black Americans even more to leave in 2020. Tired of racism and in an attempt to save their life and the lives of their children, more Black Americans moved to places such as Mexico, Costa Rica, Portugal, Ghana, Senegal, and Panama –– to name a few.
Months before Floyd’s and Taylor’s death, a 2019 report by the National Academy of Sciences found Black men were 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police.
Beyond racism, affordability plays a major role in Black Americans’ decision to move abroad.
The average cost of a home in the United States is $417,700, according to the most recent Federal Reserve data for January 2024. That’s nearly double the average cost when looking at the data from Q1 just ten years ago when the average home cost Americans $275,200 in 2014.
As prices in the volatile market continue to soar, Black…
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