Race and Privilege in Central and Southeast Europe on the Ground and in the Field

rucker-chang On My PositionalityYear after year, when I travel from Ohio to southeast Europe, I gain insights into where I fit in the local racial imaginary.When I travel, my brown skin serves as a soft border demarcating the spaces of colonized and colonizer, black and white, and possible hybridity.Local reactions to me decode the inner workings of a racial regime that provides, or does not provide, space for difference.In France, people speak to me in French.When I am routed through the Netherlands, people speak to me in Dutch, and likewise if, or when, I find myself in Germany, people speak to me in German.Likely because of the afterlives of conquest, violence, forced servitude, and migration, racial boundaries indicate to a group that I belong.Once I board the plane to travel east, however, flight attendants immediately greet me in English and linguistic interactions with strangers begin exclusively in English unless I inform them that I speak their language, which is always met with surprise.In these instances, I am reminded of Dubravka Ugrei's traveling insights in the early years following Croatia's independence, when Ugrei "felt on [her] own skin that frontiers really do exist."In this passage, Ugrei describes the manifest difference between the