4 ms·

> The more diverse a school is, the less likely it is that kids will form cross-race friendships. That doesn't make any sense to me at all except in cases wher

> The more diverse a school is, the less likely it is that kids will form cross-race friendships. That doesn't make any sense to me at all except in cases where "diverse" means "has a large population of one other racial group than white". I grew up in a tremendously diverse area of the country, the local university is one of the top5 most diverse schools in the country. Almost none of my friends were of my race, and almost none of their friends were their race either. I would expect than in a classroom of 30 kids, 15-20 countries or nationalities could be easily represented. My little gang of school friends represented nearly every continent on the planet, one kid was from Japan, one kid was mixed Japanese/American, one kid was African (from Ghana if I remember), two brothers were Cypriot, another friend was Mexican and another one was Salvadorian. Most of the kids on my school bus didn't even speak each other's native tongue. Diverse means "diverse" not "bi-polar". It's really easy to separate into like-racial social groups when you have two large groups of different races vs. lots of small groups of many races.

jakarta 17y ago
It makes sense to me. I went to both a high school and a college where there were sizable minority groups. To be clear, I ended up making friends with a diverse group. But I would often get strange looks for not sitting with other members of my own race (asian) in my classes. What I noticed was that, if the minority populations are large enough, there is no incentive to really inner mingle among races. At my college, you would see fraternities where there were clear race lines, so there would be a white fraternity, an asian fraternity, hispanic, etc. Conversely, there is a university in a nearby city where the minority groups are much smaller so minorities don't have the luxury of clustering together into separate groups. So I saw more people with more cross-race relationships.
- CWuestefeld 17y ago
  My fraternity was predominantly white, but not by design. It just worked out that way. I recall we once pledged a guy named Jose, a very cool guy who happened to be Hispanic. We were really happy to have him. But the local fraternity that specialized in Hispanics continually harassed him until he couldn't see any solution but to drop out of our pledge class.

jakarta 17y ago

It makes sense to me. I went to both a high school and a college where there were sizable minority groups. To be clear, I ended up making friends with a diverse group. But I would often get strange looks for not sitting with other members of my own race (asian) in my classes. What I noticed was that, if the minority populations are large enough, there is no incentive to really inner mingle among races. At my college, you would see fraternities where there were clear race lines, so there would be a white fraternity, an asian fraternity, hispanic, etc. Conversely, there is a university in a nearby city where the minority groups are much smaller so minorities don't have the luxury of clustering together into separate groups. So I saw more people with more cross-race relationships.

CWuestefeld 17y ago
My fraternity was predominantly white, but not by design. It just worked out that way. I recall we once pledged a guy named Jose, a very cool guy who happened to be Hispanic. We were really happy to have him. But the local fraternity that specialized in Hispanics continually harassed him until he couldn't see any solution but to drop out of our pledge class.