Black friends 

I was talking with a nice lady who is active in social issues. Her grandson asked her why she didn’t have any black friends. She was shocked and appalled when she realized he was correct.

A recent survey found that the average white person with 100 friends has a single black friend, a single Latino friend, one Asian friend, and one mixed-race friend, the Washington Post reported.

75 percent of whites, 65 percent of blacks and 46 percent of Hispanics reported having no friends outside of their race. The blacks who reported white friends claimed 8.

Anyway you figure it those figures are disturbing.

Even more disturbing is that eight white friends claimed by blacks means the actual percentages of interracial friendships is even lower than reported. If I have only one black friend and he has seven other white friends and each of us only claims one black friend he is being over reported on the survey.

My first concern was the extravagant number of friends people claimed.  Apparently my definition is too tight. I would have defined a friend as someone I trust, someone in whom I can confide, someone  I would go out of my way to help, someone I would back in a fight, and someone who tells me when I am wrong, and apparently I am wrong on this.

The first thing I had to do was refer to a pre-Facebook dictionary. A friend is defined as “a person who you like and enjoy being with or a person who helps or supports someone or something (such as a cause or charity) or one attached to another by affection or esteem.”

Using that definition I guess I have a hundred friends even if I don’t have any friends on Facebook.

I would guess my hundred friends are fairly diverse but the only way to do this survey accurately would be to survey my alleged friends and see if they claim me as a friend.

The Post article cites housing as a factor and  “our tendency to seek out and associate with people who are similar to us in any number of ways – religiously, politically, economically and, yes, racially, too. The polite term for this phenomenon is ‘sorting,’ and it affects everything from political polarization to income.”

I noticed long ago that when someone enters a large room and doesn’t know anyone, they naturally gravitate to a group they believe shares similar characteristics.  Of course race is one sorting factor.  I’ve noticed (without a study) that economic and educational factors sometimes surpass race as a sorting factor.

The “suits and ties” self-segregate.   So do the “blue collar workers.” So do many other groups.

I would think that rural Virginia and other rural areas are less segregated than cities; racially, educationally and financially. For example you are more likely to have a neighbor of another race here in Southside Virginia than in Ferguson, Mo.  You are more likely to have a college grad on one side and a high school dropout on the other than in cities. There are several reasons for this. One is that although America is roughly 66 percent white, rural Southside does not have the tightly segregated communities as found in cities.

I often hear city folks claiming Southside is more racist. I think that it is more likely that they live in a city neighborhood is more racially diverse but while that may be true on the race issue, when you look at the economic factors they are much more exclusive than we.  You find neighborhoods where every adult has a college degree, a professional job and an above average income.  No room there for “po” folks, “blue collar” working class or the unemployed there.

But this study brings out an important concern. It is no wonder we are still having race issues in America if the average white doesn’t have a black friend and the average black doesn’t have a white friend.

The big question is, how can we address this problem? When there are communities that are still segregated, how can interracial friendships be cultivated? Without the friendships, how can our racial issues be resolved?

I certainly don’t have the answer.