Posted on 08/26/2014 2:50:08 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
'Some of my best friends are black!' You're probably lying.
Do you have friends of another race? Statistically speaking, probably not.
With so much racial unrest going on in America these days, it can be hard for people to understand the "other" side. Maybe it's because white Americans never walked a mile in a black friend's shoes -- or maybe because they have no black friends to begin with.
Public Religion Research Institute found that whites' social networks are 91 percent white. Even more alarming, 75 percent of whites have a totally white social network.
For a nation that prides itself as a melting pot (or perhaps salad bowl), it's shocking that so many people could have so little racial diversity in their friend group.
Imagine a white person with 300 friends, about the size of a healthy Facebook friends list. Of those, the institute's research shows about 273 friends will be white, three will be black, three Latino, three Asian, three multiracial and three of an "other" race (and nine with an unknown race).
It's not much better for black people. For a black person, that same Facebook friends list would be made up of about 249 black people, 24 whites, six Latinos, nine mixed race, no Asians, three "other" race and 12 unknown.
Public Religion Research Institute's Robert P. Jones decries our tendency to "self-segregate" in a piece for The Atlantic.
"Widespread social separation is the root of divergent reactions along racial lines to events such as the Watts riots, the O.J. Simpson verdict, and, more recently, the shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown," Jones writes. "... If perplexed whites want help understanding the present unrest in Ferguson, nearly all will need to travel well beyond their current social circles."
Whites alone aren't guilty of a monochrome social network. While three-quarters of whites have an all-white network, 64 percent of blacks and 46 percent of Hispanics have social networks made entirely of their own race.
The unrest in Ferguson has poured salt in long-festering wounds in our country. It's often been difficult for the various groups involved to see eye-to-eye.
But we'll never make any lasting changes unless different racial, social and religious groups make a serious, sustained effort to leave their insular communities and forge real relationships. We can't call America the great melting pot if we're not even willing to get close to each other.
The article lies.
“e shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown,””
No, those can be traced back to black men attacking, in one case, a security guard, and in the second a cop.
Fascinating. Who knew?
In Chicago, when I was in my 20s, I had a really good black friend. She and I had the same first name, which was of course a good opener, and we stayed friends until I moved to CA and lost touch. I'm confident that she is having a very good life.
Last Saturday, I was flying and met the most interesting black woman. She was originally from Atlanta, and I mentioned that my daughter was looking at The University of Georgia. Somehow it came up thata we were both Christians.
I wish I had more time to talk to her. She said the only group prejudiced against is Christians. She currently lives in Tacoma, Washington and she said there are very few Christians in the area. She was saying that gay people get mad at her because of her beliefs.
I wish I had more time to talk to her. She really was a Christian. It just reminded me that it’s not the color of our skin that I make my friends based on, it’s their values.
“Knockout game”
Bit of a trivia, but the media re-named “Polar Bear Hunting” the “Knockout Game” to hide the racial aspect of the attacks.
I would not permit them to shape your discourse.
For one thing, blacks have never been much of the California population.
I will agree with you. I’m from Dallas and live in San Jose. I almost feel like california is more segregated than Dallas was when I grew up there.
“Can’t get close to each other”
Given that black mobs tend to attack whites, as in the case at Texas A&M where 2 whites were beaten to death by a mob of blacks, I am not sure getting close is a good idea.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/david-paulin/beaten-to-death-at-mcdonalds/
I guess by this method, saving each others lives in war, playing on the same sports team or working together for thirty years would not count as “friendship” - only being friends on Facebook does.
They take this abstraction, possibly lie about it (as leftist academicians often do) and then promote the narrative - See its proven, Americans are racist.
The bulk of my “friends” on Facebook I don’t know from a hole in the wall - they are just added to collect things for the online games that I play.
I’m a Houstonian, and I was shocked at the level of hypocrisy here (California), they will be friendly to blacks in that fake, condescending way of racism, where they treat you as the “black person”, rather than as whoever you are.
Like Chris Rock says in his seminal masterpiece, “How Not to Get Your Azz Kicked by the Police.”
“Get a white friend.”
Look, I have black colleagues and get along with them but my life is not the BS life that popular media tries to sell with happy, shiny white and black people doing everything together like driving in car commercials or dancing on the deck at a bbq.
Sorry that is as bogus as the single black mom with two terrified kids afraid of a white burglar...
How is this possible? Every TV commercial shows groups of black and white friends.
Somebody with excess time on his hands saw a way to stir up further racial animosity and wrote this useless article.
The instinct to associate with people who look and act most like you (aka. racism) is a survival instinct going back to the earliest humans, where approaching the wrong group led to your death. In may places in the world it still can. In a civilized society we can overcome it, but it’s never going to go away.
from the gist of that article it’s pretty much all whiteys fault.
What a fresh unique media perspective /s
“Seen any tigers running with laughing hyenas lately.Look at nature....Get a clue.... “
A better example is Timber Wolves and Gray Wolves. Force them together in captivity and they will co-exist and inter-mate.
Turn them loose into the wild and they will all soon separate back into groups of Timber Wolves and Gray Wolves.
Must be racists.
[Black people have self-segregated for years]
I agree with that. When I was teaching there were two Black women that I really liked, and they liked me. Outside of school I doubt they’d ever have ‘met up’ though and I believe it is due to being frowned on by their family and friends. They seem to choose to stand apart.
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