The 'Passport Bros': A Look at Their Cultural Impact and Financial Trauma

Photo by Levi Ventura on Unsplash

The Passport Bros have become something of a cultural phenomenon. Not because of what they do exclusively, but because of how they articulate the motivations around what they do. In a nutshell, passport bros engage in sex tourism—or put simply, travel to foreign countries for sex. While this isn’t a new occurrence by any means, the conversation seems to have expanded beyond the simple exchange of money for cheap sex in a foreign country, into the chastisement of women—Black women specifically— in that they aren’t “traditional” enough and therefore aren’t worthy of marriage by Black men. This has turned their sex tourism into international match making where these men not only engage in the exchange of money for sex, but also engage in the exchange of money for marriage.

*queues T-Pain: I’m in love with a stripper*

Listen, I’m all for love wherever it may find you, however it seems that the value of the US dollar introduces a power dynamic that allows for the perpetuation of stereotypes (on the end of the ‘nontraditional’ Black woman), and perceived status (on the end of the passport bro) that both reveals internal financial traumas, and inflicts financial trauma on their targets.

Money Scripts

Dr. Brad Klontz, a thought leader in financial psychology, coined the term money scripts , that are your unconscious beliefs about money, often rooted in childhood, that affect your adult behaviors and perspectives, and he breaks them down into 4 main types.

• Money Avoidance

• Money Worship

• Money Status

• Money Vigilance

For the sake of this piece we’re going to focus on the scripts that speak to money status and money worship.

Money worship speaks to this idea that money will solve all of your problems. That the pursuit of money will fill any voids in your life and therefore, having more money will result in more happiness or satisfaction.

From a certain lens this is totally true. Money as a tool can increase your satisfaction with life, provide additional opportunities, and enrich experiences. The money worship script is a form of self medicating that can result in the overspending of money under the guise that more stuff results in more happiness. To that end, when you can’t or don’t make enough money to fill that void where you are, it can be easier to manufacture that feeling by going somewhere the money you do have goes significantly further.

Money status on the other hand, speaks to your own sense of self worth. That is to say that while money worship fills a void, money status results in a form of ‘keeping up with the Jones’s’ in that you have to out do everyone with what you have, using your money as a tool for dominance and admiration because you have the best and newest versions of everything.

And the reality is that for some Black men, while these money scripts can certainly be formulated in childhood as a result of previous experiences with poverty or seeing others flaunt their perceived wealth, they may not be able to fully step into something like money status due to their income, industry, or education while at home here in the US. Becoming a passport bro however, allows for them to live out their money script in a country with a lower cost of living while they fantasize about the life they would like to live back home. This doesn’t provide a pass for those Black men who are high income earners both at home and abroad, they simply have a larger pool of people to try to impress with their status and may or may not be inclined to leave home to do so. To that end their dominant money script may fall in a completely different category, but I digress.

The Two Pronged Impact Of The Perceived Power Dynamic

While the behaviors associated with the passport bros can be tied into unresolved internal financial traumas, certainly the outward expression of these money scripts can also inflict financial trauma.

Money creates a power dynamic that both breeds a level of expectation in the wielder—around how they want, and feel they deserve to be treated—and the recipient. That’s not to say that sex workers in this instance aren’t aware of the exploitation of their bodies in exchange for money and that perhaps they feel they are in a position of control in consenting to this exchange. However we can’t deny that sex tourism is also a feeder source to the multi-billion dollar sex trafficking industry or that the exploitation of cultural norms that make these women “traditional” and thus prime candidates for supposed love and marriage is just that, an exploitation.

Moreover, the flamboyance many of these passport bros display in their Youtube videos, podcasts, and other forms of media that encourages this behavior, not on the merit of finding love or sex alone, but on the basis of bashing Black women at home inflicts a sort of trauma onto said Black women in that their feelings of self worth, or deservingness of love might push them into traumas that may or may not be financial. It feels into the whole gender wars psyop that Black men don’t like Black women and vice versa or that certain criteria needs to be met in order for the union between both can occur.

And I don’t disagree that a certain criteria should be met. I just don’t think it should be tied into what someone in an economically disadvantaged country will do for you, that someone domestically won’t because you flaunt your financial status.

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I have an exciting update to share! Last week I was accepted as a contributor to Forbes Digital magazine where I’ll be writing about the intersection of wealth, mental health, and race. Here’s my Forbes page.

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