<p>wow… my friends are completely multiracial.
although they are all the same age as me, I can’t connect personally with people more than a year and grade level beneath/above me…</p>
<p>@John, not even AP. IB.</p>
<p>^haha. IB is even worse…attracts Asians like ants.</p>
<p>Oh you should’ve seen them when we had a chemistry project. They were scrambling like crazy to find a way to integrate technology. I made a website and got 100. They did something simple and got B’s. They were not happy.</p>
<p>I have maybe two white friends. The rest are either Asian or mixed.</p>
<p>You don’t really notice it here…there’s a white group and an Asian group, with a couple of Asians in the white group and a couple of white people in the Asian group, and the mixed people divide themselves among the two groups depending on their cool factor. That’s a very simplistic view- I’m just talking about my grade- but it’s generally how we divide ourselves.</p>
<p>^where do the Indians fit in then? I think the Indians in my school are pretty white-washed but the groups are pretty noticeable.</p>
<p>I have lots of desi (Indian) friends because I used to live in India and most of my friends are from my old school. But here also, I find that I can at least relate to them on something but I dunno…in my old school it was a diverse bunch of Indians (from all different states) and if you know something about India you would know that the diversity between states in India is like the diversity between countries in other places like Europe but nobody really care about that stuff.</p>
<p>^ I included Indians in Asian…</p>
<p>Thing is, people stick together more with people of their “internal race” rather than to people of the same skin colour. I think college is going to be pretty self-segregated if ur going to a big state uni but more mixed if ur going to a tiny LAC where you’re forced to socialize with everyone.</p>
<p>I don’t really have any friends of my own race, though I have two fairly close acquaintances. So I guess I’m the opposite of the situation the OP was describing, but not in a good way. My bffs when I was little were both white Jewish girls (though one is way less Jewish than the other). One moved away, one is still my bff, and our other bff is Chinese (though she moved away too. But we still <3 her and visit her). And the only guys I’ve been with-ish are Turkish and Indian. Well, I think he was Indian. . . .</p>
<p>There’s definitely black/white division at my school, but the Asians are few in number so, they usually have white friends. And there are no Hispanics.
Here, I think it starts with the classes being separated. Eg: I take pretty much all advanced classes. I counted last year once that I saw about 10 black people a day in my classes. So, if you’re white and everyone you see in class is white (w/ a few Asians) your friends are all going to be white. And here, the separation doesn’t begin in 11th grade when people start taking a lot of APs, or even just in HS. It starts in 8th grade, when the top 80 kids are separated into a nearly all-white “Honors” group. While advanced classes are usually predominantly white, regular classes are disproportionately black.</p>
<p>Anyway, there’s a social theory behind this that explains how slight, excusable racial preferences lead to segregated social groups. Let’s say every white person wants to have four friends and wants, likely unconsciously, two of them to be white. And let’s say the black students feel the same way. You can play this out with a checker set, trying to surround each white piece with two whites (not using diagonal spaces) and each black piece with two blacks. The board will end up completely separated.</p>
<p>its not necessarily because people are racist, its just human nature that people are generally comfortable with members of their own race. Unless if your a whitewashed asian and feel better hanging out with only white folks all day. </p>
<p>But thats only part of the story cause at the same time almost everyone is friendly with others of other races. Enough people in this thread have talked about having a multitude of friends from all kinds of races.</p>
<p>As an Asian, I will say that my best friend is also Asian… but it’s not like my other close friends are Asian too. In fact two are hispanic, and one is a mix of almost everything, and another is white. It’s not like my best friend is my best friend because of his race… he’s my best friend because we get along the best.</p>
<p>Yeah, if you went to an international school, especially then you will have friends of all races. I the fact that for me, having friends/aquaintances of a different race is not an unusual thing.</p>
<p>At my school is 33% Hispanic 32% Black 23% White 8 % Asian 4% Other.</p>
<p>Diverse as can be.</p>
<p>Plenty of people get along just fine. My children (“biracial” themselves, by the categories commonly used in the United States) figure they are human beings, period. They barely notice race categories and make friends with everyone.</p>
<p>I really think it’s ignorance that divides people. Really, I think that even in white TX, people should know the country of Pakistan. Almost everyday on Yahoo news, is there a featured article about us. Sure, that’s not the attention I want for us Pakistanis but if you don’t know where Pakistan is or you ask me, “Do you speak Pakistani?”, I’m seriously offended. Urdu isn’t a hidden language of the world, you know. </p>
<p>But seriously, I think it’s really up to the person and not a collective group of people (or “race”). We do have inborn prejudices but it’s whether or not you acknowledge them and seek to correct them/find the truth for yourself. And I think it’s about being open too. Though you can have more in common with someone of a different race than your own. </p>
<p>There’s still a lot of racism and I don’t see it ever going away but people who use intelligence and information for discovery and not just to justify their own rigid mindsets of race and people are going to be just fine, if not discover a lot of great people. </p>
<p>So basically, it’s exposure and being open/accepting.</p>
<p>Where I live in FL our school isn’t really as culturally diverse as others. I know in places like California you have that kind of diversity, I’m sure.</p>
<p>I’m friends with an Indo-Trinidadian kid and a Vietnamese kid. The former is open with his culture and showed me a few Bollywood movies and gave me some Indian music. =D</p>
<p>Haha, I have friends from all [most?] races. Honestly, I get sort of annoyed when people ask why we can’t all be friends. The point is that there’s a divide because of these questions. If we treated race as if it was nothing [absolutely nothing], eventually no one would care. But right now, there’s a subtle divide that for some reason concerns people. I have never encountered any racists [a few politically incorrect old people, to be sure]. I feel like people need to just chill and let this [by this I mean the end of racial boundaries] happen on its own. </p>
<p>I have lots of asian friends, a few indians [my roommate was indian actually], and my best friend is half black [however her dad is guyanese, not african-american; there are very few latino or black people at my school, and my other school had a really high concentration of asians/indians/middle-eastern people. probably because it was magnet…]. </p>
<p>Okay, nonsensical rant is over.</p>
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<p>What part of FL do you live? My school is pretty diversed.</p>
<p>My HS was about 80% Black, 10% Hispanic, 7% Asian and 3% White. </p>
<p>Stanford should be fun =D (seriously, I’m looking forward to the diversity and being outside of my element.)</p>
<p>@amorestare - Central FL, near Orlando but in a semi-rural area. Our town isn’t too big either.</p>