Interracial and interethnic friendship

SIGNIFICANCE: Interracial and interethnic friendships involve persons from dissimilar racial, ethnic, linguistic, or national groups. These friendships are significant for intergroup relations because they are a sign of structural assimilation or integration for the minority group. According to sociologist Milton Gordon, integration into the primary sector of society for minorities includes having acquaintances, close friends, and neighbors from the dominant group.

Since the 1950s, legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has helped to reduce discrimination against racial and ethnic groups. Similarly, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education began the movement to desegregate public schools and, as a result, did much to break down personal barriers between Black people, White people, Latinos, Asian Americans, and other groups. As a result of such factors, contact across group lines in American schools, colleges, workplaces, neighborhoods, and social gatherings has increased, but these situations do not often lead to increased acceptance and the growth of friendships across racial and ethnic boundaries. According to numerous sources, including S. Dale McLemore’s Racial and Ethnic Relations in America (1994) and Joseph F. Healey’s Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class (1998), interracial and interethnic friendships remain relatively infrequent. This is not surprising given the centuries of racism and prejudice, as well as the differences in socioeconomic status, places of residence, and levels of education, that continue to exist between groups. Moreover, the slowly changing norms concerning issues of race and ethnicity also discourage the growth of interracial and interethnic friendships. Despite significant legal and political efforts to control them, racial stereotyping and prejudice remain powerful social forces. Whereas interactions with members of the same racial or ethnic group promote social stability, interactions with members of different racial or ethnic groups mark social change and instability, which can be seen as threatening to a group’s sense of security.

Intergroup Contact

Though statistics regarding the incidence of interracial and interethnic friendships are substantially harder to find than are corresponding statistics regarding intermarriage, there is a body of research within the social sciences that addresses the issue of interracial/interethnic friendships. Sociologist Gordon Allport’s contact hypothesis is applicable to the study of these friendships. The contact hypothesis proposes that when social, political, and economic barriers to integration and equality disappear, the social distance between racial groups should also decrease. Social distance can be defined as the degree of intimacy to which an individual is willing to admit persons of other groups, ranging from intermarriage to complete segregation.

A variety of social settings in which interracial and interethnic contact leads to friendships have been studied, but the majority of research has focused on desegregated schools. Since Brown v. Board of Education, the desegregation of schools has facilitated the interaction of students, teachers, and parents from different racial and ethnic groups. Yet when it comes to friendship, or social interaction outside the school context, the majority of the research has found that students prefer members of their own racial and ethnic group as friends, although the frequency of these friendships differs depending on what racial and ethnic groups are involved. For example, studies such as Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan’s Beyond the Melting Pot (1970) and Richard Alba’s Ethnicity and Race in the USA (1988) have found that social distance between White ethnic groups is being reduced by interethnic friendships and intermarriage. Similarity in attitudes, values, behaviors, and socioeconomic status are often the basis of interpersonal attraction, with race an important factor in the choice of friends. Therefore, it is understandable why interethnic friendships, especially between White European Americans, would be more common than interracial friendships.

Racial stereotypes and societal norms act as barriers to the formation of interracial friendships. One study has found that students often cite the tendency of members of other groups to segregate themselves and the perception that they lack common ground upon which to build a friendship as reasons why they do not have friends from other racial or ethnic groups. Other studies have also found that some school practices, such as tracking, contribute to the low number of interracial friendships; tracking, for example, may tend to segregate African Americans and other minorities into classrooms devoted to lower academic tracks. Another barrier to the formation of interracial and interethnic friendships is the perception of negative family attitudes toward these friendships. Psychologist Beverly Tatum argues in her book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race (1997) that a serious and straight talk about race and racial identities is essential to overcome stereotypes and racism with the goal of creating a more integrated society.

Among adults, research has tended to focus on the effects of residential desegregation on interracial contact and friendships. Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton’s American Apartheid (1993) explored the issue of residential segregation and found that racial groups remain virtually segregated, even when they are of the same social class. Among adults, therefore, interracial friendships remain infrequent, both because of a lack of opportunities to interact and because of prejudices and stereotypes. One study by James E. Rosenbaum et al. found that when low-income Black families moved to middle-class White suburbs as part of a housing voucher program, considerable racial integration was achieved, including a substantial number of individual friendships.

Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and African Americans

Rates of interracial and interethnic friendships vary depending on the groups involved. According to sources such as S. Dale McLemore’s Racial and Ethnic Relations in America (1994) and Joseph F. Healey’s Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class (1998), Asian Americans have experienced considerable assimilation in the areas of primary relations such as friendships and marriage, especially with white European Americans. Overall, the extent of intimate contact between Hispanic Americans and White people is higher than for African Americans, yet lower than for Asian Americans and White people, according to Healey. For example, according to McLemore, Mexican Americans decreasingly have only Mexican friends over time. This generational trend is more pronounced among those living in desegregated neighborhoods and among those of higher income, suggesting that if Mexican Americans continue to live, work, and send their children to school in desegregated areas, the number of friendships with non-Hispanics will continue to increase. Similarly, Clara Rodriguez’s Puerto Ricans: Born in the USA (1989) found that rates of interracial contact increase for Hispanic Americans of the more affluent social classes who live in the cities and for the presumably more Americanized younger generations.

According to the majority of research, including McLemore’s Racial and Ethnic Relations in America and Healey’s Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class, friendships between African Americans and White people are the least frequent. These two groups remain virtually separated in their personal relationships everywhere but in the schools. Even in school, the proportion of African American/White friendships remains low. According to research, it is common for Black students to remain virtually segregated within primary and secondary school systems, and Black college students are increasingly forming their own sororities, fraternities, and student organizations. The low level of interracial contact between African Americans and White people is further evidenced in the low rates of intermarriage between the two groups. 2015 data from Pew Research center showed that 11 percent of heterosexual intermarriage was between Black and White individuals. Therefore, McLemore concludes that the level of primary assimilation of African Americans, as evidenced in the low number of interracial friendships and marriage, is low compared to that of other racial and ethnic groups.

Improving Intergroup Friendships

One of the most commonly proposed methods of improving intergroup relations is for people to establish communication, get to know one another, and participate in group activities together. This process enables individuals to judge members of a different race or ethnicity on the basis of their individual characteristics rather than their group membership. It is often maintained that such transformations are most likely to occur if the individuals involved are of equal socioeconomic status, if they are given the chance to work cooperatively together, if their interaction is supported by those in authority, and if there is a high level of intimacy. Often, intergroup contacts that occur under different circumstances do not alter prejudices and rarely result in the formation of friendships, because they simply mirror the power differentials and inequalities of the larger society. Other factors that have been shown to influence the outcome of contacts between members of different racial and ethnic groups include minimal competition, voluntary interaction, and similarities in beliefs and values.

Schools can encourage intergroup contact by offering noncompetitive, supportive environments where different racial and ethnic groups can interact and work cooperatively. Proposed methods of accomplishing this include the implementation of small-group learning teams and interracial extracurricular activities. Moreover, positive effects on the development of interracial friendships have been observed when school officials and teachers have implemented programs that reduce status differences between students of different racial and ethnic groups.

Bibliography

Allport, Gordon. The Nature of Prejudice. Garden City: Doubleday, 1958.

Essenburg, Laura J. “Variation in Adult Interracial Friendship.” Conference Papers—American Sociological Association, 2015, preceding pp. 1–35. SocINDEX with Full Text, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=111784813&site=eds-live. Accessed 1 Dec. 2024.

Gordon, Milton. Assimilation in American Life. New York: Oxford UP, 1964.

Hallinan, Maureen T., and Ruy A. Teixeira. “Opportunities and Constraints: Black-White Differences in the Formation of Interracial Friendships.” Child Development 58 (1987).

Hallinan, Maureen T., and Richard A. Williams. “Interracial Friendship Choices in Secondary Schools.” American Sociological Review 54 (1989).

Hallinan, Maureen T. and Richard A. Williams. “The Stability of Students’ Interracial Friendships.” American Sociological Review 52 (1987).

Healey, Joseph F. Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class: The Sociology of Group Conflict and Change. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge, 1998.

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Livingston, Gretchen, and Anna Brown. “Intermarriage in the U.S. 50 Years After Loving v. Virginia.” Pew Research Center, 18 May 2017, www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/05/18/intermarriage-in-the-u-s-50-years-after-loving-v-virginia/#:~:text=In%202015%2C%2017%25%20of%20all,from%204%25%20to%2011%25. Accessed 1 Dec. 2024.

Massey, Douglas, and Nancy Denton. American Apartheid. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993.

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Tatum, Beverly Daniel. Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race. Basic Books, 1997.