THE Sheet This Friday (13) the blog Guia Negro, authored by journalist and diversity consultant Guilherme Dias, debuts.
“Guia Negro appeared in 2018 with the desire to inspire more black people to travel, and also to create tourist experiences that provide itineraries in which blackness was the protagonist”, explains Dias, who now brings the blog to the newspaper’s Tourism section.
It was after a one-year backpacking trip, visiting 25 countries, that Dias decided to dedicate himself to travel in his writings. He remembers that, on that occasion, he realized that all the people he knew who wrote about tourism were white.
“And the people I passed on the road and were taking longer trips too. I reported on situations of racism that I went through while backpacking and many black people said they had the same problem, in addition to the invisibility in tourism”, he says.
In Guia Negro, Dias will give tips on places of black culture and history, in addition to pointing out how diversity should also be in tourism.
“This is one of the most important industries, it moves money, jobs, dreams and having this Afro-centric narrative raises the self-esteem of black people, in addition to valuing black culture, which is paramount in our country”, he comments.
“We still have agencies, hotels, airlines run by white people, just like most travelers. Black people are still worried about resisting and surviving. They need to enjoy life, take a vacation, plan the gap year, something so common. for white people.”
A traveler and entrepreneur, Dias says that, in Brazil, the destination where he feels most at home is the Bahian capital, Salvador, which he calls a “black mecca”—a place, for him, where all blacks need to go at least once in a lifetime.
Abroad, his favorite place is Egypt. For Dias, it’s like “a dip in history class”. “I cried seeing the pyramids for the first time.”
