Birds of a feather

Is mostly being friends with people of your same ethnicity/race wrong? Why do we do this?

The next time you go to a classroom, audience, or party, who do you find yourself grouping with? The answer might be, “with the people who look like you”. 

Last semester, I shared a class with about 120 other students in my same program once every week. Something I’ve noticed, and others as well, is that when given the choice to sit with anyone we want, we choose to sit next to our friends who, most of the time, happen to be from the same ethnicity. 

Today’s big question is:

Is mostly being friends with people of your same ethnicity/race wrong? And why do we do this? 

Here are some other variations of that question: 

1. Should you purposely diversify your friend group? 

2. Is intentionally seeking friends from the same race/ethnicity wrong? 

3. Do friends of the same race/ethnicity end up closer? 

4. How big of a factor is race/ethnicity in determining commonality and subsequently, how big of a factor is commonality in determining friendship?

5. So!

6. Many!

7. More!

8. Questions! 

Good thing there’s a phrase that’s related to all of these questions! It’s: 

Ethnic homophily - The phenomenon where “individuals prefer [the] same - rather than inter-ethnic friends” (Leszczensky 2015) 

If you know me, you know my friends are primarily Asian (East and South). So why am I talking about this? I’m not here to harp on diversity in my program, it’s just where I’m able to notice certain social behavior more easily. I’m also not here to claim some sort of betterment over you. And I’m definitely not here to try and justify whatever fits my current narrative the best either. In fact, I’m not here to take a huge stance on anything (surprising for me, I know). I’m still figuring out what the heck ethnic homophily even is. And more importantly, how to even pronounce “homophily” (I think it’s “ha-moff-illy”). 

The extremely difficult questions above are extremely difficult. Let’s try to explore them with some more extremely difficult questions (and studies and outside sources and interviews and anecdotes. I’m trying to do the whole writing thing correct for once)! 

How much of ethnic homophily is conscious?

I’m a part of Texas AACM (Asian American Campus Ministry). When asked why I chose to join AACM, my answer is clear: “I want to be a part of a community that celebrates my similarities, ethnic culture and religious beliefs. The sharing of two major aspects of my life - culture and religion - makes me feel seen for, well, one of the first times in my life.” 

If, then, that logic is okay and understandable, are we allowed to apply that same logic to justify friends we made that weren’t purposefully selected through joining an organization that focuses on those things? 

Our discussion is based on the key assumption that people do, to some degree, prefer to hang out with people like them, which ethnicity is a main driver of. This represents the concept of shared identity, which my good friend Athul explained to me. 

If I traveled to New York and saw someone wearing UT merch, I would feel compelled to say hi, help him out, be his friend. That is our shared identity. It only works when it’s something special and small. On an airplane, you’re not inclined to talk to those around you, until your flight is delayed. Now, you’re not just people on a plane, you’re people whose flight was just delayed. That’s your shared identity. At UT, everyone goes to UT. That’s no longer our shared identity, so we default to something else that’s pretty big: our ethnicities.

Athul proposes that this desire to find shared identity is at the root of our subconscious magnetism towards people like us. But when we don’t know whether or not someone is like us in their interests or personality, we default to the fact that if they look like us, they’re probably similar to us. Once you fulfill your circle like this, it’s hard to break it, and people on the outside will always feel like they’re on the outside. 

Ethnic homophily is driven by your own ethnic identification

So we know that ethnic homophily can be largely subconscious, with the exception of those seeking a cultural group. Well, there’s something that drives those subconscious feelings as well, and it’s personal ethnic identification. Researchers Lars Leszczensky and Sebastian Pink find that “the strength of ethnic identification affects not only how much individuals desire same-ethnic friends, but also how attractive they are as potential friends to others.” They studied German adolescent school-based network panel data, and they found that “high identifiers befriend same-ethnic peers who share their strong ethnic identification, while excluding same-ethnic low identifiers. Low identifiers, in turn, tend to avoid befriending inter-ethnic high identifiers.” 

In simpler terms, those who strongly identify with their ethnicity are more likely to have same-ethnic peers due to their similarly strong ethnic identification! Just like Athul proposed, researchers confirm that strong ingroup identification drives ingroup favoritism. 

On the other hand, researchers Xiaochen Chen and Sandra Graham found that those with more cross-ethnic friends reported more social-emotional safety at school. Intimate friendships with “out-group” members can reduce intergroup anxiety. 

In simpler terms, those with more non-same-ethnic friends are more likely to have less anxiety and feel socially “safe”.

How do we feel about this? How should we feel about this? 

Let’s hear from people who have experienced different versions of what we’re discussing today. 

An interview with an Indian girl with mainly South Asian friends: 

Me: Do you ever feel weird for having mainly same-ethnic friends?

Her: Yes, I do feel weird. Honestly, I resent it a little bit. I feel like it’s easy to stick to what you know and what feels familiar (in this case brown people) but difficult to branch out and connect with those who are different to you. I feel like I’ve lost my touch in being able to connect with people that are different from me because I’ve gotten too comfortable in the friend group I have right now, which can sometimes limit me.

Me: What are the differences you see?

Her: Some of my friends have only ever had same-ethnic friends. They have no interest in making friends of any other ethnicity, and I feel like because of this, they have difficulty branching out and meeting new people. In this social organization (majority white), I was able to connect with and make friends with people who were not Indian, while I could see someone who has only had same-ethnic friends their whole life was struggling a bit.

Me: Do you find yourself drawn to making friends with Indian people more easily?

Her: In college, yes. And I wish it wasn’t like this. I feel like I’ve grown too comfortable and am not branching out as much as I could be to learn about experiences other than my own.

Me: What’s your opinion on whether someone should actively try to diversify their friend group?

Her: I don’t necessarily think people of color need to actively diversify their friend group, but there absolutely is value in having a diverse group of friends and being exposed to different experiences than your own.

A statement from Lillian, an East Asian girl with mainly East Asian friends: 

It’s fine if you have a homebase where you feel comfortable with mainly people of your ethnicity as long as you still interact with others like a normal human being.

A statement from Edwin, an East Asian guy with more diverse immediate friends: 

In high school I hung out with mainly Asian people. Currently, I find myself in more of a diverse crowd. I’ve never given it much thought, but I would define the way I make friends through my interests. There was a big interest-difference between high school and college that I noticed, which could also be due to the significant increase in population in college. As much as your friends are defined by your interests, your interests are also defined by your friends. It sometimes irks me when people assume I’m not as in touch with my Chinese heritage because of my lack of only Chinese friends.

An interview with a girl with mainly same-ethnic friends who grew up in a hometown with <2.5% of her own race: 

Me: Is it weird to you when people mainly have friends of the same ethnicity?

Her: I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily weird. Sometimes it does feel like they’re closed off or a really exclusive group. But then again, most of my friends are of the same ethnicity, and I don’t think that way.

Me: Do you purposely try to diversify your friend group? On the other hand, do you purposely try to make friends with people of your own ethnicity?

Her: I don’t purposely try to make friends with people of my ethnicity, but I usually find more in common with them, and they just so happen to be my ethnicity. Growing up in a town where there weren’t many people who looked like me, my best friends were of my same ethnicity. It just feels like a familiarity on a family level, if that makes sense.

Me: Should someone actively try to diversify their friend group?

Her: I think so. Is that weird? No? I love hearing different stories from all of my friends on the different ways they were raised and how they celebrate holidays. Learning from different cultures is really important.

We’re a product of our environment - even our past environments 

The idea here is simple. If you grew up in a hometown with a lack of your same ethnicity, you could either be driven to actively seek out your own ethnicity in college (joining cultural organizations, etc), or you could develop low ethnic identification and continue to seek what’s familiar to you. Conversely, if you grew up in a hometown with an abundance of your same ethnicity, you could either be driven to seek new perspectives (joining diverse social organizations, etc.), or you could be comfortable with what you’ve known your whole life. 

Either way the conclusion is the same, and it’s what Amalia Álvarez of Stockholm University suggests: “Organizational divisions in classrooms play a decisive role in the pattern of friendship connections in the school.” 

Sociometric data was collected during a school year and a model based on a friendship network was constructed. Álvarez found that ethnic homophily was first found through students making connections within the ingroup. However, the effect of ethnic homophily seems to decrease between the time points, signaling an environmental play in ethnic homophily. 

My thoughts 

I’ve had the idea to write this piece for a long time now (like more than a year, actually). Even longer was when I started noticing the things I wanted to write about. The reason it’s taken me so long to write this is because frankly, I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I get frequent feedback on my writing commending my “strong voice” or “clear message”, and I’m afraid the same may not be said for this one. This piece, like the topic I want to talk about, is by nature, all over the place. 

Something I do want to be clear, though, is that if you find yourself mainly around same-ethnic friends, that’s cool. If you find yourself not mainly around same-ethnic friends, that’s cool too. If your thoughts were provoked while reading this or you learned something interesting or you enjoyed listening to me try to make coherent sense about this topic, that’s the coolest! 

I wrote this partially as a way for me to explore the topic, while also sharing what I found and what others have to say about it. Ethnicity/race is always difficult to talk about, but it honestly shouldn’t be. If there are any takeaways from this, I’d say here they are: 

1. Ethnic homophily is the tendency to seek out/prefer same-ethnic friends 

2. Is it conscious? Most of the times no, and it’s driven both by our innate desire to find shared identity and the fact that commonality lets us make friends more easily 

3. We do this because of how much we do (or don’t) want to be related to our same-ethnicity influences

4. We do this because of how much we identify with our ethnicity. This is called ethnic identification

5. We do this because of how, where, and most importantly who we grew up with 

6. Is it good? It can be but probably shouldn’t be strived for 

7. Is it bad? It can be but only in extreme cases 

8. What do you do now? Keep making friends with who you want to be friends with, but now you just have some more knowledge to hopefully prevent extremities, exclusion, or disinterest in regards to ethnicity! 

Anyway, I’ll end this with a funny cartoon that isn’t super thought provoking because this topic has been a little too serious for my usual writing, and I heard that humor lightens the mood, and I really don’t want to be canceled for trying to talk about something that involves race/ethnicity.