Tamara J. Walker

“. . . the [NBC] network bosses called her into a meeting. 'Ricki,' they said, 'you're Black. And you're the only woman. We're going to be sending you around the world, and you don't know what you're going to run into.'

Ricki laughed. She knew exactly what she was going to run into. 'Having lived in Saudi Arabia,' she told me, 'and having gone to all these different places, I knew that I was treated really special in other countries, far better than the treatment I got in the United States. And that's what happened working for them: The only time I ever had challenges would be in America. But traveling all over the world? Never a problem. NEVER a problem.”
― Tamara J. Walker, Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad

“It didn't take long after moving to Paris for Ricky to realize that her experience of the city was not universal. 'The Afro-French have a very different experience here,' she told me. Janet McDonald, a lawyer, told THIS AMERICAN LIFE host Ira Glass about having a similar realization after she moved to Paris from Brooklyn in the 1990s: 'For African Americans, we're in a very bizarre position. It's almost like being an honorary white in apartheid South Africa. And I noticed that, as my French got better and better, sometimes I wasn't as well received as I would be if I played up my American accent.”
― Tamara J. Walker, Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad