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Thread: Question - how many close friends of colour do you have? OR How to be a friend

  1. #1
    Senior Member razz's Avatar
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    Question - how many close friends of colour do you have? OR How to be a friend

    Based on the thread about a father's concern for his son being able to make friends with white people, I examined my own life

    When i really thought about it, I have to confess that I have few friends that are of colour - brown, black or other.
    I am friendly with everyone but have developed parameters for friends before I get close. I have one black acquaintance, one Pakastani

    Neve thought about it before though. We live now and make our choices now.
    As Cicero said, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”

  2. #2
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    Growing up in San Antonio TX, I had a lot of hispanic friends. It was just part and parcel. I loved that their families were large and tight as mine was the opposite. My first boyfriend was hispanic and I even lived in Mexico for a time as a young woman. I recall that there were only two black students throughout my public schooling there and both were children of household help. Every household in my neighborhood had one or two maids who did not speak English. Just the way it was in those times there. Up until I retired from a university setting, I had friends and acquaintances of all colors. Not so much here in Colorado and I miss that.

  3. #3
    Williamsmith
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    I just want to say.....I learned not to cast stones a long time ago. For the record, I’m not a racist. I was once a pig, however.

  4. #4
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    Razz, maybe you should start with, how many close friends do you have?
    Close friends, I think needs better defining.

  5. #5
    Senior Member bae's Avatar
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    I have very very few close friends outside my immediate family.

    One is female and white, and my best friend in the whole world - our mothers worked in the same OB ward, and each helped deliver the other. Basically my favorite sister.

    Two are male, and Jewish, and white. (I had three in this category, but one died just a year ago, my high school roommate, who had become a rabbi, and who was a really cool fellow.)

    One is black, and from NYC.

    One is Chinese.

    One is from Vermont. White, but inbred.

    One is a Democrat. And Navajo.

    One is from Guam, and whatever color Guamanians are.

    These are all friends who would drop everything to come help me bury a body :-)

  6. #6
    Senior Member rosarugosa's Avatar
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    We have one friend who is quite close to us. We may not see her all the time, but there is a lot of love between us. Our town is not very diverse, and when I was in HS there were probably about 4 black students in the school, and she was one of them.
    I am quite close to two black co-workers, but that is a different type of relationship. We don't socialize outside of work (I don't socialize with any of my co-workers outside of work).

  7. #7
    Yppej
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    I also do not have a lot of close friends outside of family, just no time for much socializing with my long commute and the early bedtime routine I have. Both my family and non-family friends are racially diverse. When I started my current job 7 months ago I came in determined to be friendly with everyone, but have connected most with a woman from Egypt who is of the same generation and interested in ideas and global issues. A lot of the white local yokels are cliquish and IMO superficial.

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    Close friends - we’ll, if I were hospitalized, there are 4 people i’m not related to who should know. Three of them would visit me. The other one would come if I asked. They are all white. I went to school in a rural area in an isolated gifted program back when “gifted” meant “white or Asian”. I had 4 white friends then too. Two of them attended my school. I live in rural Ohio. My family is more diverse in almost every way than my friends - Age, race, religion, politics, economics, professions, lifestyle choices, geography. The exceptions I can think of being sexual orientation and family construction. I have one distant relative who is probably gay, but closeted, I have no known legally adopted relatives. (I actually consider one of the original 4 mentioned to be family)

    Who you are friends with starts with who you meet and then moves to who you find connections with. So logically, your friends are going to have more demographics in common with you than the general population does. (All my close friends are parents and partnered)

    when my my kids were small we lived in a college town. My “friends” were still all white, but my “people you would want at your birthday party” (my dd’s definition of friend) list was extremely diverse in ethnicity and nationality (except I would never have wanted to have that kind of birthday party, so it was more “people you would like to see one on one once a week or so”

    when we we lived in Iowa my social group was defined by the wives of the men my dh worked with, and it was 25% (1 of 4) Hispanic. I also had one “friend” I made on my own who was Native American. (When I moved, I left all of those people behind, so none of them were actually friends, just “birthday party” friends)

  9. #9
    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Williamsmith View Post
    I was once a pig...
    A friend's father was a cop. When I was a kid he would say: "Pig stands for Pride, Integrity, and Generosity."

  10. #10
    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    My closest friends:
    -LaTonya: Black woman and Johns Hopkins educated pediatrician. Married to a blue collar white guy.
    -Jeff: Ashkenazi Jewish atheist clinical social worker. Married to a white Methodist woman.
    -Bill: The biggest SJW I know. Regular straight white guy. Social worker with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. Married to a half-Jewish woman.

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