Blackness unbound: autoethnography, culture, and global blackness through the Triple Helix Model.

In this cultural autoethnography, the author examines how global travel (re)shapes Black identity, embodiment, and racial consciousness through a sport-influenced lens. Drawing on personal experiences traveling in Italy as a Black sport professor, the author blends personal narratives, excerpts from James Baldwin, music lyrics from Kendrick Lamar, and the theoretical lens of the Triple Helix Model to explore how universities, industries, and governmental systems collectively shape internalized understandings of Blackness. The manuscript interrogates how racialized expectations formed within American sport and society travel abroad as part of an internalized racism of mind, influencing perceptions of safety, belonging, and self-representation for Black people. Encounters in Italian public spaces-particularly those mediated through global sporting cultures such as football-illuminate the tensions between stereotype, fear, and cultural curiosity. The work demonstrates how international travel can reveal and disrupt internalized racism, offering pathways toward decolonizing the mind and reimagining Blackness beyond U.S. sociopolitical confines. Ultimately, this study contributes to global sport scholarship by foregrounding how Blackness is lived, negotiated, and transformed across cultural borders.