Dear Fed,
All my friends are going to Punta Cana for Spring Break this year, and I’m supposed to go with them, but I’m starting to feel weird about it. We were also thinking about Costa Rica so that we’d be cooler than the mainstream Columbia crowd, but idk if that’s better.
Am I a gentrifier for visiting a country in the Global South? Should I just stay on campus instead? I don’t want to get canceled by my leftist friends who are going to Berlin, plz help.
– Bad (?) SJW
Dear Bad (!) SJW,
Unfortunately, you sound like a gentrifier to me! Visiting a country that’s reliant on tourism just because it’s cheap and you get to wear a bikini? Sounds pretty exploitative to me.
And your alternative is to stay on campus and contribute to the rampant gentrification of West Harlem? Honestly, worse! Consider these non-offensive options for domestic and international travel instead:
If you’re looking for a new vacation spot and trying to curb your carbon footprint, check out these destinations with the lowest rates of diversity in the country!
Laconia, New Hampshire
Butte-Silver Bow, Montana
Barre, Vermont
Watertown, South Dakota
Clarksburg, West Virginia
But if you have to go abroad, why not check out one of the whitest cities in the original colonizer’s homeland, Workington, Cumbria in the United Kingdom? With 98.5 percent of the population identifying as white, you’ll fit right in! Who knows, maybe you’ll even get to teach some locals about abolition and reconstruction!
Yeah you might not get a tan…and yeah you might not eat anything seasoned…but won’t the lack of white guilt be worth it? Whatever you do, let us know how it goes, and send us a magnet!
– The Fed
