I am Afro-Brazilian. I am light-skinned. This combination — Black identity paired with lighter complexion — gives me a set of travel experiences that I want to document honestly, because the comfortable version of this story is dishonest and the dishonest version does actual harm. Colorism — discrimination based on skin tone within racial groups, which generally advantages lighter-skinned people over darker-skinned people — does not stop at national borders. It is a global system with regional variations, and as someone who moves across Latin America, West Africa, and Europe regularly, I observe it in operation across different cultural contexts. **Brazil** Brazil has a racial classification system with more than one hundred thirty officially recognized racial categories, a legacy of colonial attempts to manage gradations of racial mixing. The system is not neutral — lighter skin remains correlated with higher income, better access to education, and greater representation in media and professional classes. This is documented by IBGE (Brazil's census bureau) and is not a matter of serious academic dispute. As a light-skinned Afro-Brazilian man, I am read as Black in some contexts in Brazil and as ambiguously brown or moreno in others. The second reading carries privilege. I am aware of it. Being aware of it does not make me stop benefiting from it. This is the uncomfortable truth of colorism: the benefits are structural, not chosen, and not refused simply by naming them. **West Africa: A Different Color Logic** I have traveled in Ghana, Senegal, and Nigeria for food journalism work. In these contexts, I am often read as light-skinned in a way that carries local associations: wealth, mixed heritage, or returnee diaspora status. None of these are accurate to my specific situation but the association is there. In markets in Lagos, I have received quoted prices that were higher than what my darker-skinned companion was quoted at the same stall, moments apart. Whether this was colorism, tourist-pricing, or coincidence I cannot say definitively. The pattern recurred enough trips to register as a pattern. **Europe: The Anti-Blackness Baseline** In Europe, the colorism within racial groups largely dissolves into the dominant anti-Black framework — the primary sorting is whether you present as visibly Black or not. I present as visibly Black to European eyes, and I travel accordingly: with the knowledge that my reception will vary by country, by region, and by class environment, and that my complexion gives me no particular protection from the structure of European racial hierarchy as it affects Black people. **What I Want to Say About Privilege and How to Hold It** Acknowledging colorism privilege does not require performative self-flagellation. It requires accuracy. Accurate witness of what is happening in rooms you move through. Accurate accounting of when you benefit from proximity to whiteness or to lighter skin standards. And accurate use of any platform you have to make space for darker-skinned travelers, writers, and voices whose experiences the same systems are actively marginalizing. The Afro-Brazilian travel writing space is small. I use what platform I have to direct readers toward writers whose skin I am lighter than and whose experiences are structurally harder than mine for reasons we did not choose. This is not enough. It is also what I can do from where I stand.