As a black man, this is the reason I decided to leave America forever

By mid-November, my wife and I had secured our positions in academic programs in the UK. Although most of the universities closed admissions, my Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology and my wife’s Health and Care Professions Council credentials opened doors. We chose the student visa route, due to its flexibility in setting up our new institution.

Logistics proved complicated, particularly arranging international transportation for our Scottish terrier, Roscoe. As we navigate the Seattle housing market and divest assets, we are fortunate that current property values ​​have provided sufficient resources to ensure our transformation remains permanent. This ability to choose our own destiny reflects undeniable privilege – choices that my grandfather could never have imagined when he first described me as “weird.” We went from zero to London in less than two months.

Growing opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in American academia has been particularly evident, but equally troubling is the fundamental lack of infrastructure that supports this work. While my department has been exceptionally supportive, the broader landscape of academic AI reveals a troubling pattern. Unlike established academic disciplines with clear theoretical foundations, dedicated journals and institutional houses, DEI work often exists in a fraught space – valued in rhetoric but malnourished in practice.

My success in this field has come from intentionally linking industrial/organizational psychology with DEI principles, creating measurable outcomes and data-driven methods for achieving inclusion. This marriage between methodological rigor and fair work should not be new, but should be standard practice. However, across academia, DEI initiatives often lack this type of foundation, resulting in well-intentioned but ineffective programs that fail to create lasting change. You can see that in how easily they can be dismantled at George Mason University, Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Wyoming, etc. Like so much trash, it was easily tossed aside.

As someone who has dedicated years to promoting diversity in higher education, I have watched with increasing concern as equity work faces systemic dismantling. The combination of external political pressures and internal institutional failures creates a perfect storm. When lawmakers craft policies aimed at undermining civil rights protections and weakening anti-discrimination laws through initiatives like Project 2025, the writing on the wall becomes impossible to ignore: It’s time to push back.

The Pacific Northwest, for all its natural beauty and professed progress, showed me the limits of American liberalism. As a Black person in Seattle, I rarely see others who look like me in certain places, which creates a strange kind of isolation. This hyper-visibility in professional settings—being the most visible person in the room and the most ignored—creates a unique psychological burden that requires constantly navigating the perceptions of others while maintaining one’s sense of self.

It’s not about giving up the fight for racial justice. It’s about realizing that sometimes, survival requires finding new ground on which to stand and breathe. The legacy of slavery and its modern manifestations have created an America where the air becomes heavy with the unresolved debts of history. Recent studies show that black college graduates have lower levels of wealth than white high school dropouts. Black Americans’ life expectancy is six years less than their white counterparts. All of this paints a clear picture of systemic inequality that no amount of individual achievement can overcome.

We look forward to our departure date with both anticipation and reverence. I will celebrate my birthday the next day in London, which symbolizes more than personal significance; It represents a conscious choice to define our future on different terms. We don’t run away. We are moving towards something better. The UK faces its own challenges with regard to racism and inequality, but there is a fundamental difference between choosing its battles and inheriting them.

For those considering making similar decisions: This process requires significant financial resources, emotional resilience, and psychological preparation. The practical challenges are significant, from securing international positions to dealing with visa requirements and managing the logistics of moving abroad. However, for some of us, the cost of survival has become untenable.

As a Black academic who has studied systemic racism and trauma extensively, I have concluded that self-preservation sometimes emerges as a conscious choice to thrive elsewhere. The psychological toll of dealing with American racism – the constant hypervigilance, the burden of representation, the exhausting dance between visibility and invisibility – exacts a price too high to ignore.

Living in America as a black person requires a special kind of awareness, one that my grandfather recognized in me long ago. Perhaps being a “special Negro” also means having the courage to pursue prosperity and peace beyond America’s shores, carrying with us the wisdom of our ancestors as we chart new paths forward. We prepare for this next chapter with the understanding that sometimes, the most powerful form of resistance is a refusal to remain in spaces that require our shrinkage.

Our story is not unique, but it is personal. It is a testament to the ongoing challenges facing black professionals in America and the possibility of choosing a different path. As we pack our lives into shipping containers and prepare for our new beginning, we carry with us the complex legacy of our American experience—pain, resilience, and the hope that elsewhere, we might find not just survival but opportunity. To truly thrive.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.