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This is something i don't relate to, as i have always had a mix of friedns. Why is it so hard for people to find common ground with people outside of their ethnic group in this day and age?
No surprise there, really. However I do find it sad that even in this day and age, as multi-cultural as this country has become, even in the large coastal cities like LA and NYC, most people's friend circles are incredibly homogenous.
Hum..looks like these numbers were based on asking people to name up to 7 people with whom they regularly discussed maters. Looks like most people in the survey named less than 7 people. The median number of friends and family cited was 3 people. Among the 3rd person, 65% of respondents cited family members as their close contract.
Conceivably, the researchers tossed out family members and just focused on friends. The basic take away, the headline figures are extrapolations based on very, very thin survey data.
Nonetheless, the basic conclusions seem logical:
1) most people have friends of their own ethnic group.
2) minorities probably have slightly more integrated social networks since by definition there are fewer minorities than white people.
But, we probably should look for more research before quoting the specific numbers as gospel.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if a 50 year old in suburban Iowa or small town Ohio has all white friends. However, I would be surprised if a 30 yr old white person in DC or SF did.
Have you been to SF lately? Not anymore. It is pretty racially segregated these days.
One of my asian friends chimed in (i posted this on facebook) that most of her asian friends only know asians. Come to think of it, i don't know her asian friends. Only the white and latin ones.
I guess it is easier to relate to people of one's ethnic group. This seems to be the case with immigrants and first generation folks. With me besides my best friend since grade school, none are from my ethnic background. I don't make friends based on Eunice origins, but character and personality. Just because one is from same ethnicity does not mean they make a good friend or romantic partner. I find it sad if you limit yourself by dismissing people outside your ethnic group, though nothing wrong with same ethnic buddies.
Why is it so hard to accept that those studies are only a small portion of the entire planet and different people have different friends because it is their choice either on purpose, by area, by religion, by common denominators, by interests, or by culture.
Sometimes it actually has to do with the fact that there are not many of a different race or ethnicity in the small town one lives in.
There are maybe one family of 4 blacks in our community then out of the rest of the community at least 90% are Hispanic families and the rest are white or Chinese.
The other smaller towns around us are much the same but getting into the bigger cities 25+ miles away there is a mixture of all I mentioned in addition to Swedish, Vietnamese, Japanese, Cuban, Jamaican and those from Ecuador.
It is not healthy to focus so much attention to misrepresented studies, the color of someone's skin or their ethnicity.
It was be interesting to see the breakdown by age and geographic region.
I would imagine younger people are more likely to have more integrated social networks.
I would also imagine that people in bigger more diverse MSAs have more integrated social networks than people in smaller, less diverse areas.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if a 50 year old in suburban Iowa or small town Ohio has all white friends. However, I would be surprised if a 30 yr old white person in DC or SF did.
That being said, there is still a lot less mixing between young Blacks and Whites than say young Asians and Whites who have high integration rates (given, or maybe because of, the relatively small size of the Asian population). I'm guessing it is mostly a function of education/income and tastes.
Go out in DC on the weekend. The city basically has two types of venues: 95%+ AA nightlife spots (both upscale and average) and "white yuppie" spots that are 75-80% yuppie white/10% yuppie black/10-15% yuppie Asian/Latino/ME. There are also a small number of Spanish-dominate clubs for the Salvadorian immigrant population.
It isn't all that homogenous here in Las Vegas. Since so many of us work at the resorts (which are the model for diversity), we tend to get thrown together and mixed up in a slightly more efficient way than I have seen elsewhere.
I don't like living in Las Vegas for a lot of reasons. But ethnic relations is one thing this city actually does pretty well. It's not "break out the guitar and sing Kumbaya" yet. But this city is better than most places I've lived.
I guess it is easier to relate to people of one's ethnic group. This seems to be the case with immigrants and first generation folks. .
I think your point about immigration is key. According to the Census Bureau, 79% of naturalized citizens and 89% of non-citizens spoke a language other than English at home. Given, that Asian and Hispanic communities are so heavily dominated by immigration, 76.7% of Asians and 74.7% of Hispanics spoke a language other than English at home. A little under half (45-47%)of both groups also reported speaking English less than "very well".
Given, these statistics it wouldn't be surprising if most Asians and Hispanics (which are heavily immigrant dominated) mostly associate with their own ethnic groups. However, it will be interesting to see the social networks of 1.5, 2nd and 3rd generation English-dominate, culturally assimilated Asians and Hispanics. Anecdotally, they seem vastly more socially integrated.
This is something i don't relate to, as i have always had a mix of friedns. Why is it so hard for people to find common ground with people outside of their ethnic group in this day and age?
We're human. We gravitate towards what is familiar. Nothing wrong with that. But I've known a few white folks who make it hard for non whites to get close to them. So they get to own some of that.
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