“Travel is the music of my soul,” Ms. Lee said. “The biggest surprise about traveling internationally was to discover that in many parts of the world, it is an asset to be a black woman, unlike in North America, where it is often a liability. Travel to Africa is among the most healing of all. You go there and get part of your soul back.”

The idea that travel is a soul-stirring experience was echoed by Greg Gross, who got a taste for traveling when, as a child, he went from New Orleans to Los Angeles on the Sunset Limited. A former newspaper journalist, Mr. Gross started the blog ImBlackNITravel.com (I’m Black and I Travel) six years ago after coming across a black woman in Natchez, Miss., who proudly said she never intended to set foot outside the limits of her native city. Though he’s traveled the world, he says his most emotionally resonant moment happened in the United States, in the nation’s capital: “I walked over to the Lincoln Memorial. I wanted to stand on the exact step where Martin Luther King Jr. had stood to give his famed ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, to see the view that he saw that day. And I found it. To be in that place, to look out over that same vista, was a moment more powerful than I can explain. I couldn’t talk. I could barely breathe. I was not the same when I came down off those steps.”

There are other, more practical benefits particular to black travelers, like the ability to blend in. Brian Keith Jackson, a novelist who sometimes contributes text and film to the work of the artist Kehinde Wiley, has lived in Beijing, far from his northern Louisiana roots. “In many places, because most of the Western world has been white and has projected their images as white, black skin means Africa, not America,” he said. “Although I’m an American, people don’t view me as an American.” Mr. Jackson, who has short-cropped hair, believes that his pecan skin tone, and the perceptions around it, “helped me in my travels, because everyone thinks I’m from there, certainly in Sri Lanka.”

Brown skin that’s often perceived as “otherness” in parts of America is not seen that way in much of the world. After traveling to more than 25 countries (and 48 of the states), I call being brown in a region of brown-skinned people “masking.” I experienced it in southern India, where many people were similar shades of brown as me or darker. I was not mistaken for being a local, but I could circulate less conspicuously than fair-skinned visitors. I took advantage of my skin color (and some common-sense cultural and street smarts, like dressing modestly, showing no valuables and staying alert) to go solo and explore low-income areas of Mumbai that the guards at my luxury hotel had warned me against visiting. My reward: I was invited to lunch at the home of a family, where an older couple and their son and daughter-in-law shared a two-room house.

That isn’t to say that the experience of traveling while black is one high note after the other. There are bias attacks on blacks in the United States and abroad. Last year, for example, the United States State Department issued an advisory, still in effect, about Greece warning that “there has been a rise in unprovoked harassment and violent attacks against persons who, because of their complexion, are perceived to be foreign migrants. U.S. citizens most at risk are those of African, Asian, Hispanic, or Middle Eastern descent.” And there are high-profile but low-danger incidents, as when Oprah Winfrey was denied a look at a $38,000 purse in Switzerland — “too expensive,” the billionaire said a sales assistant told her. (Of course, not many of us, black or white, are in that league.)

That may be why travel patterns are still very much shaped by race. According to Mandala, African-Americans are most likely to visit Florida and Georgia. African-Americans and Latinos are more likely than the general American population to seek our historic attractions; three-quarters of African-American leisure travelers say it’s a critical factor in their choices. Group travel is twice as popular among African-Americans than whites, according to Charlie Presley, the founder of the African-American Travel Conference, perhaps pointing to a sense of security in numbers as well as the proliferation of black interest clubs and professional groups.

These clubs help drive black tourism, exposing us to new destinations. Ms. Lee, for example, said that when she made a rare trip to Utah (which is less than 2 percent African-American) with the National Black Ski Association (a.k.a. National Brotherhood of Skiers), “I was pleasantly surprised by the Utahans’ friendly reception of our color-full group. The N.B.S. members typically boost local economies to the tune of $3 million during their weeklong summits.”