In a recent episode of the Code Switch podcast, hosts Gene Demby and Shereen Meraji talk about friendship between people of different races. The results don’t really surprise me.
I have friends who are White, Asian, Black, Biracial, Aboriginal, …. How many different races and cultures do your friends represent?
Canadian Culture Shock
I went to high school in West Carleton, Ontario, not a place with much diversity. Having moved to Canada from St. Lucia at the age of 12, almost 13, imagine my cultural shock. My first friend there was an Indian girl who probably took pity on me. I mean, even the bus driver had told me that I needed to make some friends after he watched me sitting alone on the bus, my nose in a book , day after day.
I’d never had to make effort to make friends before; my friends had mostly been people I grew up with, people of my own background that I didn’t need to explain things to. Thanks to Amy, I made friends with some other Asian and White students. We didn’t have a lot in common though; they were not like my friends “back home”. I had to adapt to a different type of friendship; one that was much more superficial than I was used to.
When I joined West Carleton Secondary School (WCSS), there were mostly white students, with some Asian students thrown in. I was the only black student for the first 2-3 years. Eventually, a few black students joined the school, but they were in a lower grade than me, and by then, I’d found a good friend that I could be comfortable with. I would have had no friends at school if I was waiting for someone who looked like me.
Friends of Different Races
A few years ago, a friend remarked that a white friend of hers seemed surprised that she had more than one black friend. I remember this reaction surprised me. To me, as a person who moved from St. Lucia to Canada, and then lived in countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, it seems incredible to imagine a completely homogenous group of friends, especially amongst people working in an international setting. Is this another example of “privilege”?
Do you have any friends who are not the same race as you? Any close friends, people you do stuff with outside of work?
Consider the research presented in the embedded episode. Does it matter if all your friends look like you? It’s worth considering and examining our biases …