Bright and beautiful Roseland Hupp is a world traveler, a college graduate, Senior Project Manager, wife, mother of three and owns her own travel company called Ketour Travel. She shows me an embroidered sash she brought back from a recent historic trip to Ghana. The event marked the 400th year anniversary of Africans arriving in Point Comfort Virginia.
"My husband and I participated in an atonement ceremony where families whose ancestors were slave raiders literally washed our feet as an act of humility. This plea for forgiveness and the ceremony was a symbolic apology for the acts of their ancestors. We participated in the naming ceremony and that's where this sash comes from. We were given traditional African names so my traditional African name is Mbifo and this literally means ‘I see you, you can't trick me type of deal, you can't be deceptive’. I think that's why to me, it is powerful. Because of the whole renaming and being able to experience the warmth and the reconnection with the continent of Africa.”
“All you see is another view of what beautiful is, knowing you'll never attain that because you don't look anything like that.” She explains,
Hupp is a passionate advocate of people traveling, especially those from the diaspora, encouraging them to visit one of the 54 African nations within their lifetime. Hupp feels the deep connection to a place where humanity began, and encourages others to find that connection too. Traveling to China, Istanbul, Africa, Corsica and many other places, often alone, shows a deep confidence in herself and an insatiable curiosity to experience other cultures. She explains the powerful discoveries that can be made when traveling alone; “I think if you don't get out there, you do yourself a disservice because you don't know, you don't get to see things. I like to think when a woman travels by herself, you actually start to learn a lot about yourself. You learn how strong you are in situations.“
Hupp’s strengths expand to dispelling myths about the Black woman, while traveling and here at home. “Some of the stereotypes people may have about you and saying that Black women are ghetto, aggressive, loose or anything like that. I’m always trying to make sure I'm dispelling those myths.” At work, she changes her language and presentation to appease her workplace. She remains professional while keeping her privacy and personal life close to her.
Hupp stays alert when out and about, shopping and performing regular errands. She finds herself paying close attention to how people react to her. She has been in circumstances where other people felt she couldn’t afford things in their store. When shopping, she often has to “...put myself in a position to let people know I'm not trying to steal or anything like that. That's not what I'm trying to do. I'm actually shopping and doing it just like everybody else. If I come into a store, I can buy whatever I want. I make my money and I can get whatever I want.” Suspicious clerks aren’t the only ones showing bias. Recently an incident in the car while driving affected Hupp.
“A crazy white man tried to run me off the road,” she explains.
She was getting on the local freeway when a white man driving ahead of her singled her out, slowed down, attempting to show her a sign he was writing on, eventually giving her the finger and driving so erratically at and around her, that Hupp became fearful and alerted the police with his license number. She was followed by this person for some time until eventually Hupp recalls that “he finally decided to stop following me but the thing is, it was a scary situation because you have someone acting real crazy and you never know what will happen.”
“Being a woman, being a Black woman is one of the most challenging things to be. It's challenging because the first thing people see is your color, your ethnicity and then they see your gender. It’s never ‘this woman’, it’s never this point where they say ‘oh there's this woman over there’, it's always ‘this Black woman’. Being a Black woman means that you have to be really strong and be able to deal with all types of racial issues that go along with being of African descent.”
She shares that being underrepresented in social media, advertising and entertainment sectors, affects the self esteem of many young Black people.
“All you see is another view of what beautiful is, knowing you'll never attain that because you don't look anything like that.” She explains, “I have a niece with a dark complexion. She struggles with it because she's really dark and there is this sentiment that dark women aren't beautiful. So this is hard when you have little kids. She's just my niece who's seven and she's feeling like that.” Hupp feels that even with the struggles of being Black in society, she would never want to change who she is.
Her advice for younger people is to “make sure you learn your history. I know a lot of times it's difficult when you're growing up and in history class, they kind of touch on different things. If there's something that's brought up about slavery, it can be overwhelming. They need to also understand what happens before slavery, because slavery doesn't make up African-American’s total history. Go to the library sometimes because schools don't always have all the books, be a little bit more proactive in learning.”
Hupp is excited about the Black Lives Matter momentum. “For certain people this country has never been great,” she says. From the horrific enslavement of African American people, to police violence against Black americans nationwide, the Black Lives Movement is bringing attention to the forefront of these issues. Police reform, calling out racism and reparations are in order to help heal these wounds. Hupps adds, “I do hope one day we won't have to educate people on things like white privilege or having people feel superior to another race. My fear is the momentum will dissipate and people return to a so-called normal. I think we need to make sure we integrate some type of strategies that will create change that's long lasting.”
Interview & story by Jennifer Randall
Editing: Calcio Rose
Photographs: Shawnalee Anderton
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