http://men.style.com/gq/features/full?id=content_7483
WILL YOU BE MY BLACK FRIEND?
Sure, we may elect a black president this month. And yeah, Oprah has all kinds of white ladies in her audience. But in real life, it seems the older you get, the less chance you have of being friends with someone who is not in your racial demographic. Can a nice white boy make some black friends if he puts his mind to it? Devin Friedman posts an ad on Craigslist to find out
My Craigslist post said, among other things, “I’m a 36-year-old white guy. I grew up in a diverse neighborhood and have always gone to diverse schools. I’ve always had a decent number of black friends. That’s changed over time. I work in the publishing industry, which is super white, and I’ve realized that my group of friends is getting whiter and whiter.… It’s amazing to me that almost everyone I know has either black friends or white friends, but not both. We could have a black president, and still not have a very mixed country.” Then I added a few more lines about don’t let me show up at the bar and you’ve got a horse tranquilizer for my drink. I guess you could say the post ran a little long. I guess you could say I was worried about the possibility of a misunderstanding.
Why one would take out an ad on the Internet looking for a black friend is a legitimate question. Here’s my answer:
I had a cocktail party the other night. A natural moment to look around at the demographics of your life. And I thought: Jesus Christ, there are a lot of white people in this room. I’ve always thought of the whiteness of my adult life as a temporary condition. Like somehow all these white people have been foisted on me; pretty soon it’ll change; it’s probably my wife’s fault. But it’s time to acknowledge that I’ve become a character in a Wes Anderson movie. I wear white tennis sneakers from the ’70s. I listen to ambient music. I have dinner parties where I serve Spanish rosé and this softer version of mozzarella that has a lovely, almost liquid center that you can only get at the Italian import store. I do yoga, and I get excited when it’s ramp season. Sometimes I’d really like to punch myself in the face. (You might argue that I’m not describing “whiteness” but “arugula-ness”; but when black people have this lifestyle, they get accused of being white.) I used to make jokes about “look at us here at the weekend house in the Catskills in our blazers and sneakers eating the braised pork shoulder from the Jamie Oliver cookbook with the David Gray on in the background—aren’t we like that Amstel Light commercial?” You know that Amstel Light commercial about the white people’s country weekend—it’s white-people pornography. But I stopped making the joke, because it stopped being a joke. Because I stopped noticing it.
Please read the rest from GQ. His story is very interesting in the way that confirms my observation on the basic premise of the theory of Rational Segregation(that is further explored in the article). I travel a lot, and it's difficult to keep track of big core group of friends when you are flying 80,000 kms a year. But I have noticed that as some of my friends get older, the more likely they are to stick to their "kind" or people similar to them. Some of them have trouble accepting new ideas or food that doesn't share a similar cultural template that they can relate to. Or maybe it's because I don't hang out with as many female friends as I used to, hmm..., maybe that also says something about me.
How is it with you guys?
Pretty much the same thing but not because of any conscious effort on my part. Had I had a while longer to work at my last job before I got sick I'm sure I would have made some lasting friendships with people of different ethic backgrounds than myself. I have a very small tight nit group of friends that I've had since I was about 15 or so. A couple more were added while most of us were in college but that's it. Those friendships were all formed because of common interests whether it was gaming, music, faith or whatever. I have no doubt that if there were more black people in my area that were interested in gaming when I was younger, I'd have some close friendships with a few of them.
One of my best friends in high school and I used to hang out with an Asian friend who used to love to come over and play M.U.L.E with us on my friend's computer. We also had a black friend who was probably the only black person in Atlanta at the time who was into heavy metal music (which was the common interest that drew us together). I've lost track of them since then but then I've only kept in touch with three people from my high school. *shrug*
I could have made more friends at work like I mentioned but I didn't forge any lasting relationships with any white people from work either. I worked with some really nice Asian, Hispanic and black people though and I think about them often. Two people in particular come to mind. There was an older gentleman who was the head custodian at one of my schools. We got along really well and I was even looking into whether we could offer him a position at our company. Our common interest was being politically conservative. Then there was a woman who was my contact with a lab I had as a client. Our common interest was being attracted to each other though it never went beyond friendship because she was married. She did write my boss a note though a few months after I took over that account. She said, "Thanks for sending the sexy new project manager!"
