I'm a Black woman who grew up hearing about the American dream. Here's why I'm moving to Italy.

• Ashley Blanc was born in Trinidad & Tobago but moved to the US when she was a baby.
• Her experiences with racism and disillusionment with the American dream led her to plan to retire abroad.

This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Ashley Blanc, a 38-year-old entrepreneur who recently bought a property in Latronico, Italy. The essay has been edited for length and clarity.

I was born in Trinidad & Tobago but was brought over to the United States when I was a baby. When I was young, my parents and I took family vacations to Barbados, and got a taste of traveling. That opened me up a lot to the world outside America.

Growing up in the streets of Baltimore, there was a sense of unity within our community. But when I started working when I was 14 years old, I started to see more localized racism, like, "She's a Black girl, I don't know if she can do this job."

I've always felt like I have to fight extra hard — not just as a Black person but as a Black woman in particular — whether it's with college applications and job searches or reparations. Black people have to keep working. After a while, we get tired of fighting, of proving yourself for nothing.

A lot of things that leaders like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. have done have been unraveled. Everything should not have to be a fight. When we fight back, we are criminals. Even when we're peaceful, that's a problem here.

I realized I didn't want to grow old in America

My tipping point came early, when I was in my late 20s. I worked for Social Security, taking calls from elderly people. They would complain and say they don't have enough money to pay for prescriptions, to get eyeglasses, to pay their rent. "My house is being taken away from me," they'd say.

That was a big eye opener for me: Do I want to be like that when I'm their age? I realized that if this was how I was going to be paid at the end for all my life's hard work, I don't want it.

I knew I wanted to retire early, at 45 or 50 years old, so I started to become very interested in learning how to buy real estate and flip properties and all that. I also knew from my time working for Social Security that I definitely didn't want to retire in the US.

I started looking into real estate abroad just to get a sense of what the prices were like there. In the fall of 2021, I came across an article about cheap homes for sale in Latronico, Italy.

I had never been to Italy before, but I decided to send an email to the town's deputy mayor, Vincenzo Castellano. Within an hour and a half, he emailed me back and ended up showing me homes virtually. I was sold: Just a few months later, I put down my down payment for a home in Latronico.

As a Black woman, I don't feel free

I think there's a growing interest in moving abroad because America is not the American dream. I think a lot of people are starting to realize that. From the change in politics to the change in society itself, there's even more racism than before.

Money also plays a part. We're at a point where the middle class isn't even considered as middle class anymore. There used to be the rich, the middle class, and the poor. Now, it's just a line between the poor and the ultra-rich.

People are saying, there's gotta be something different. America is telling us, "It's better here." But as a Black woman, I don't feel free. In Italy, though, I felt free. I'm not saying racism doesn't exist there, but it's not as severe as it is here. What we're realizing is that we want peace and a better way of living.

Italy is now home to me

My experiences visiting Italy have been amazing. People will go to certain lengths to help you. It doesn't seem like they're seeing color. It's more a sense of, "You're here in our country, and we'll help you."

I think there's a difference between any instances of racism encountered in the US versus in Europe, at least in my experience. There, racism isn't coming from the fact that you have Black or brown skin, but more from the fact that there are people coming from other countries and changing the society's lifestyle.

But here in America, it's moreso, "We don't like you because you're Black and you're beneath us." At the end of the day, a history of slavery and colonization has taught them that this kind of attitude is okay.

I'm very much looking forward to moving to Italy in the next few years. The more I see things here, every day, my heart is saying "go home." And "home" is there, in Italy.