Do You "Know" A Person Of Another Race?

[Inkachu]

I think a lot of it has to do with how we're raised. Our parents - and those of us who are now parents - have a huge impact on how we see other people. I grew up around some pretty rough neighborhoods, and it wouldn't have been unreasonable for my parents to teach me to stay away from certain people as a child. But they didn't, my dad especially embraced anyone and everyone, and he had a special affection for black people. My mom came from LA so she grew up around Hispanics, and as I said earlier, she married a Greek man. So as a kid, I was taught that people were people, it didn't matter what color they were, you treated everyone the same. And it wasn't just lip service from my parents, they demonstrated it with their actions. I remember we lived one street over from a very rough, drug-infested area that was all poor, black people. We'd have the kids over at our house where they could play safely all the time. There was one elderly black lady who would sometimes walk down our street, and some of the white kids would yell names at her. I would get so enraged, I'd scream back at them to leave her alone. She would often lock herself out of her house (maybe she had dementia? I don't know, I was very, very young) and she'd come to our house because she knew we'd drive her home and I would shimmy in a window and unlock her door for her lol. She always tried to pay me with a quarter, bless her heart. Her name was Mary... I'll never forget her.

 

[Inkachu]

p.s. sorry for 3 posts in a row ... it's a boring day.

You should be sorry for not posting MORE. Depriving us of your awesomeness. For shame.

 

[keith99]

Same here, Cute. I don't actively seek out friends of any race or color or culture. I make friends with who I like, and I like all sorts of people.

So far, every respondent has answered positively to knowing people of other races. Awesomeness.

I forgot the Russian and the Georgian here at work in my first post! Of course Hispanics. That both at work and at home. There is a landscape contractor our family is pretty close to. Because of circumstances, specifically that he was stopping by my mom's house when mom was in an automobile accident turning off the main street to the residential area he was the first to the hospital and he was the one who called me and others in the family.

Oh that is not American Georgia btw.

 

[Inkachu]

I'm sitting here at work next to a lovely older black lady, and a girl in a wheelchair. Down the hall is a Trinidadian (?) woman, a Hispanic woman, an Irish woman, and several black men. I'm actually the minority in this office, now that I think about it lol. It doesn't bother me in the least. I've never even noticed it until I posted this.

 

[RDKirk]

I thought the claim was that white people don't have black friends?

Some clearly do.

The statement was:

Dgiharris believes that most white people don't really know any black people, and our interactions are nothing more than perhaps a smile or brief greeting.

Recent surveys indicate that up to 75% of white people don't have any non-white friends, and that's possible through sheer demographics and location.

 

[Inkachu]

Survey link, please?

 

[RDKirk]

How so? I find it hard to imagine - or maybe this is about the area of the US in which I live - that anyone can go through life not making friends with people of other races. My two close work friends are Hispanic and African-American, and my other friends are mainly Hispanic, in fact my only close white friend is Russian. If I were to actually be racist, I could choose to seek out only white people and befriend them I suppose ... I just can't imagine forcing myself to like people because their skin color is 'right'.

There are quite a few small towns in the Great Plains and Midwest that have zero non-white residents and many of the residents have never lived anywhere else. My last 15 years I've worked with many white people from such areas who had never been physically close enough to a non-white person to form a natural friendship until that particular job.

That fact kind of takes me aback--I was a military brat and then career military, having lived in a great many places on both sides of the planet. It's hard for me to imagine having lived all my life in one small town in central Illinois, but I'm coming to see that is rather the norm in the US.

 

[Inkachu]

I don't think the majority of Americans have lived their entire lives in a small, midwest town... unless I'm misunderstanding what you said.

I understand that some areas of the country are less likely to have substantial non-white populations, but I don't think it's the majority of the country at all. And I think it's becoming fewer and fewer every day.

 

[RDKirk]

I don't think the majority of Americans have lived their entire lives in a small, midwest town... unless I'm misunderstanding what you said.

I think most have not lived in more than one place, and most don't live around enough non-white people to have formed natural friendships. That would be as true in many suburbs as in small towns and rural areas.

That's a generous interpretation of the data--otherwise the supposition would have to be that 75% of white Americans are choosing to avoid friendships with non-whites.

 

[Inkachu]

According to the delightfully mixed bag of folks we have here on CF, though, it's just the opposite. Everyone has said that they have close acquaintances of other races.

I've lived in the same 20 mile radius my whole life, but I'm certainly not living in some "whites only" part of the country. I really don't think such areas are THAT widespread as you seem to be thinking.

I'm still waiting for you to link these surveys, too

 

[Inkachu]

I just found this. It's a very cool map showing racial distribution across the country in the form of colored dots. 1 dot = 1 person. At first glance, if you zoom all the way out, the country looks mainly blue. Blue is for white people, so that's understandable; we already know the US is mostly whites at this point. However, if you zoom in on any one area - yes, even the Midwest! - you will see an awesome rainbow of colors representing various races in all areas of the country. Neat!

The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

 

[selfinflikted]

The statement was:



Recent surveys indicate that up to 75% of white people don't have any non-white friends, and that's possible through sheer demographics and location.

Ah! My fault, I must've misread the original supposition. My mistake

 

[RDKirk]

Survey link, please?

Three quarters of whites don’t have any non-white friends - The Washington Post

How PRRI calculated the racial breakdowns of friend networks
As part of their American Values Survey, PRRI researchers asked respondents to name up to seven people with whom they regularly discussed important matters. They then asked a battery of demographic questions about these people -- their relationships to their respondents, as well as their gender, religion and, germane for these purposes, their race. They used these numbers to derive average racial breakdowns of the friend networks of the average black, white and Hispanic survey respondent.

http://publicreligion.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/AVS-Topline-FINAL.pdf

 

[RDKirk]

I just found this. It's a very cool map showing racial distribution across the country in the form of colored dots. 1 dot = 1 person. At first glance, if you zoom all the way out, the country looks mainly blue. Blue is for white people, so that's understandable; we already know the US is mostly whites at this point. However, if you zoom in on any one area - yes, even the Midwest! - you will see an awesome rainbow of colors representing various races in all areas of the country. Neat!

The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

Yeah, but that one green dot in the town can't be friends with all the blue dots.

 

[catfood]

from a person living in a multi racial country this is a weird thread.

 

[Cute Tink]

I just found this. It's a very cool map showing racial distribution across the country in the form of colored dots. 1 dot = 1 person. At first glance, if you zoom all the way out, the country looks mainly blue. Blue is for white people, so that's understandable; we already know the US is mostly whites at this point. However, if you zoom in on any one area - yes, even the Midwest! - you will see an awesome rainbow of colors representing various races in all areas of the country. Neat!

The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

This is amazing. It's also fun to see how much more populated the east half of the country is.

 

[Inkachu]

"As part of their American Values Survey, PRRI researchers asked respondents to name up to seven people with whom they regularly discussed important matters." That doesn't add up to "friendship" or knowing someone. I don't discuss important matters with anyone but my husband. But I'm friendly with and know people of all types. Not an accurate survey, IMO. If it was trying to measure friendships, it should have asked about friendships.

 

[Inkachu]

Yeah, but that one green dot in the town can't be friends with all the blue dots.

Methinks you are just bound and determined to think that most white people are isolated from and ignorant of anyone but other white people.

 

[Inkachu]

This is amazing. It's also fun to see how much more populated the east half of the country is.

I'm glad someone else found it as cool as I did

Just for kicks, I picked a random, small town in the Midwest (somewhere in Kansas) and zoomed in. Sure enough, a huge population of Hispanics and also some blacks. Didn't seem to fit the "small midwest town where there are nobody but whites" scenario. I can see that being the case maybe a generation or two ago, but not today.

 

[RDKirk]

Methinks you are just bound and determined to think that most white people are isolated from and ignorant of anyone but other white people.

No, I'm giving as many white people as possible the benefit of the doubt: That they lack black friends simply because they're not in proximity to black people.