This blog was originally written between 2009 and 2015, when I was living in Türkiye.
Looking back through old posts, one thing that has stood out to me is how often I used the word “expat” to describe myself.
I don’t use that word anymore.
At the time, I didn’t give it much thought. It was the language commonly used by the English-speaking community around me, and I simply adopted it. But in the years since moving back to the United States, I have spent a lot of time and energy learning more about colonialism, racism, microaggressions, intersectionality, and my own role and responsibility as a white woman.
Part of that learning has been understanding that colonialism isn’t simply something that happened in history books and then ended.
Its influence is still woven into the way we live, the borders we recognize, the stories we tell, and even the words we use.
Even a term as familiar as the “Middle East” describes a region from a European point of view. Middle of what? East of where?
The answer is Europe.
For most of my life, I never questioned that language. It was simply the name of a region on a map. Once I started learning more about colonialism and power, I began noticing how often the Western perspective is treated as the default perspective.
The same questions started coming up when I thought about the word “expat.”
Why was I an “expat” when I moved to Türkiye, while so many people who move to another country are called immigrants?
The words are not always used along perfectly racial or geographic lines, and there are differences in how people define them. But there is also a very real pattern in how they are used.
A white American or European moves abroad and is often described as an expat.
Someone from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, or Asia moves to Europe or the United States and is far more likely to be described as an immigrant.
One word can suggest adventure, choice, and an international lifestyle.
The other has been politicized, judged, and too often treated as a problem.
I never stopped to ask why I had been given the more comfortable word.
I should have.
My six years living in Türkiye are still some of the most important years of my life. I treasure that time and the people who welcomed me.
Living in a country where I was not part of the majority culture also changed me.
I want to be careful here because my experience as a white American woman in Türkiye was absolutely not the same as the experience of a marginalized person living with systemic racism in the United States.
I could go home.
I had an American passport.
I had economic and social privileges that followed me across borders.
But for the first time in my life, I regularly experienced what it felt like not to understand.
I couldn’t always follow conversations. I couldn’t easily explain myself. I missed jokes, instructions, social cues, and important details because my Turkish wasn’t strong enough yet.
I knew what I wanted to say and sometimes simply didn’t have the words to say it.
That experience did not teach me what it feels like to experience systemic racism.
What it did was wake me up to how much I had never noticed.
It made me think differently about what it means to navigate a school meeting, a doctor’s appointment, a government office, or a workplace in a language that isn’t your own.
It made me more aware of how quickly intelligence and language ability can be confused.
It made me notice how much privilege comes with being able to speak and simply expect to be understood.
Since returning to the US, I have continued trying to learn.
I have learned more about the difference between equality and equity. I have learned about intersectionality and how race, gender, class, disability, immigration status, and other parts of a person’s life overlap and affect the opportunities and barriers they experience.
I have also had to accept that simply believing I am “not racist” isn’t enough.
For a long time, I think many white people, myself included, were taught to think of racism almost entirely as an individual moral failure. Don’t say racist things. Don’t intentionally discriminate. Treat everyone the same.
But systems don’t disappear simply because I personally have good intentions.
Language, policies, institutions, and social norms can continue carrying inequalities forward even when the people participating in them don’t consciously intend to hurt anyone.
That is why I have come to believe it isn’t enough for me to simply say I am not racist.
I have a responsibility to try to be antiracist.
For me, that means continuing to learn, paying attention to whose perspective is being treated as the default, questioning language I once accepted without thinking, listening when someone points out something I have missed, and being willing to change.
It also means being willing to look back at my own words and admit when I would write something differently today.
So, as I update this blog, I am removing the word “expat” from the way I describe myself and my years in Türkiye.
I was an American who moved to another country.
I was an immigrant.
Using a different word for myself without ever questioning why is something I now recognize as part of a much larger pattern in how we talk about migration, belonging, and who is seen as choosing an international adventure versus who is seen as entering someone else’s country.
I am sorry that I used the term so casually throughout this blog.
I am not going to pretend the person writing these posts between 2009 and 2015 knew everything I know now.
She didn’t.
And I know the person writing this today still has more to learn.
But I also don’t want to quietly edit the language and pretend it was never there.
I think part of doing better is being willing to look at where we started, acknowledge what we got wrong, and keep learning.
So this is me doing that.
