I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I feel like I have a lot of friends. Good friends. Who would like, loan me money if I was in a pinch, or let me stay with them if I lost my home. Real true blue friends who are down for me and vice versa. I feel so blessed to have these wonderful people in my life. But what I love most about my friends is that they are varied—my confidants look like the United Nations—white, black, Asian, Latina, Indian—I am friends with them all. For a long time, I thought that this was how everyone was, having friends of different ethnic backgrounds and nationalities, but I found out during the last year or so that that isn’t the case.
So I ask the question: What do your friends look like?
When I say friends, I am not talking about people who you chat with online or in passing at an event. I am talking about people you put in time with—people that have been over to your house and vice versa. People you have traveled with, cried with. There are so many people I know that have friends, but ones that look just like them—no variety. Not that you have to have that in your life, but why wouldn’t you want to?
I’ve had a few of my Caucasian friends say “of course I have Black friends”. But when I ask them when’s the last time they’ve invited their Black friends over, they can’t answer. To me, that’s not a friendship. You are colleagues or associates.
I love that I have friends that are everything. I often go to lunch with friends who don’t look like me—and I like it. I get to learn from them and they can learn from me. The world has changed and doesn’t look like it used to. So in my opinion, your friends should look like the way our world looks.
One thing I noticed during the last election, was that the two parties looked like night and day. When I watched the Republican Convention, it looked like the country club set. Now there’s nothing wrong with that, but when I looked at the Democratic National Convention, it looked the way our current U.S. population looks–it wasn’t an exclusive set of people that were prevalent. There were whites and blacks and Latinos and Asians and women and disabled and I can go on and on. For me, I want both of my children to befriend people of all ethnic origins.
This is not a judgment post, but one that I hope provokes thought. What do your friends look like? Comment below and let’s discuss.
P.S. The picture of above is of my and my friend Janice Person, aka @JPLovesCotton. Get to know her on Twitter!
Nice post. I wrote about this on my blog a while ago. I haven’t had non-black friends since I was a child. Not necessarily on purpose but that’s just the way it’s been. I’ve certainly had non-black co-workers, associates and acquaintances but not real friends. I don’t tend to have a lot of friends in general though so I suppose it makes sense. I’d be lying if I said it really bothers me that my small circle isn’t racially diverse. I’m not against making friends of other races, it just doesn’t seem to happen.
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Great post. I don’t have a lot of friends and the friends I do have are all black. Growing up I had more friends who were white and my best friend in junior high was white. Somewhere along the line my circle changed. I’m not exactly a people person so I attribute that to the lack of diversity in my inner circle.