Why do college kids hang out with their own ethnicity?

<p>Really. Who cares?</p>

<p>this is kinda funny. I have a couple of best friends at my school, and I have one best friend in at least every ethnicity. i go to a CCC, a huge one, and in fact the same 'de asia' that oxypunk was talking about, and there has nothing to do with a group of people that i specifically hang out with. I'm president of our new south asian awareness club, but that has no bearing or effect on the type of friends I make. I think that people who think too hard about this arent getting out enough..</p>

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My oldest goes to a HS that is only 47% white. Yes, all her friends are white, but don't classifiy her a racist just because of that.

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<p>Well she's not a racist, but that is still pretty strange. With that glaring percentage alone, I would expect her to have at least one friend of another race. I guess that's her "preference" then, but it's still incredibly weird to me. :/</p>

<p>Drosselmeier, thank you for putting your input in here. You brought a very intelligent and well thought out response to this thread.</p>

<p>My oldest D was adopted from Latin america when she was a baby. We raised her in a community that is 94% Mexican-American and her school friends were both Hispanic and Caucasian. We thought this was a good place to raise her because we were worried about her feeling isolated or different. </p>

<p>Two things have occured since my daughter and my other 4 children have grown up.
1. My daughter who is adopted has basically turned her back on us while in the Navy. She got pregnant with an African-american man, got married and and has now completely enculturated her into the African American community to the point that I often cannot understand what she is saying, due to her accent and language. She also rarely calls and spends all her spare time with her mother and sister-in -law who take care of the baby when she is working. Do I feel hurt? You betcha!<br>
2. My other children feel that they have been subjected to major amounts of prejudice and discrimination because of being Anglo-American in a Hispanic community. I wasnt even aware of the depth of their feelings until recently. </p>

<p>So I wonder now, was it a good decision to come to the Rio Grande Valley, raise my kids here and feel like I was making a difference by teaching in this community? I believed that my husband and I were doing a positive thing by raising our kids in the this community and allowing them to experience being part of a multi-cultural community.</p>

<p>Our school district is 70.2% hispanic, 25.6% caucasian, 4.2% other. It is practically IMPOSSIBLE for hispanics and other NOT to mix. They do and quite successfully - none of that "but would you want your daughter to date/marry one" bit. D used this diversity element as the theme for several of her college essays. Her friends and boyfriends have been a mix of both just because that is the way ones social life goes here.</p>

<p>for example, jokes are a common thing but only people from your culture will get them. you don't wanna feel stupid and say something that's not funny when you're among white or black kids.
it's just society I guess...</p>

<p>man, i is an indian and i find it hard to conform with white groups. mainly because our cultures are vastly different</p>

<p>schools don't get much more diverse than my high school... we've got like 40% black, 25% hispanic, 20%white, 10% asian, 5% other... really diverse school by the numbers.</p>

<p>But you notice that kids across campus self segregate themselves all across campus. like at lunch you notice all the white kids sit together, all the black kids sit together, all the hispanic kids sit together, all the asians sit together, all the muslim kids sit together (not really an ethnicity/race, but it's something that i noticed)... </p>

<p>furthermore you notice that another way that the kids self segregate is by course selection. you notice that most black and hispanic kids take regular classes... while a much higher percentage of the other kids take AP/honors courses. a teacher told me that their are a lot of the black/hispanic kids that should be in the AP class, but when she tells them that it'd be good for them to go up to the AP class they say they don't want to because the AP classes are too white</p>

<p>Next off the preppy whites and minorities in the AP classes usually self segregate themselves anyways. For instance in my AP English class last year the teacher had all the seats facing each other, like a debate set up, and for the first 2 weeks she gave us assigned seating so she could memorize our names by alphabetical order. for these two weeks everyone was mixed up and not a lot of kids socialized during free time. after the two weeks she let us sit anywhere we wanted and all of a sudden all the white kids moved to one side of the room and all the minorities moved to the other side of the room... and the socializing went way up... it's like that in all the AP/honors classes</p>

<p>now my analysis of this situation isn't that it's a race thing, but rather a sort of interests thing</p>

<p>for instance their are a few foreign russian kids who sat on the minority side and even though they're white they feel more comfortable around the minorities than the preppy white kids... and their was one preppy asian kid who sat on the white side all year...</p>

<p>now from my experience it seems like all preppy white kids like to talk about is the party that they are going to on friday and how they are going to get soooooo smashed or stoned or whatever, it's annoying as HELL for me to sit next to these preppy kids and listen to them talk about how they are gonna get so drunk this weekend and pass out and all this crap, and it seems like it's all they think about</p>

<p>now with any other minority group its not like that at all and we can talk about subjects much closer to our own interests like religion, video games, music, TV, and school work. if you sit in an all black class (i actually have one almost entirely black class) you'll notice that they talk about sports and rap 90% of the time, hispanic kids... well idk *** they talk about cuz they usually speak in spanish but it's less annoying than having to sit there and listen about them getting smashed in english, asian and muslim kids usually sit there and talk about school work and video games... it's just a matter of interests. </p>

<p>the non-preppy white kids (not many) usually hang around one of the minority groups... because they don't want to keep hearing kids talk about how they're gonna get smashed this weekend and hope that their girlfriend gets really smashed too so they can have a good time</p>

<p>pretty long rant, but just my observations</p>

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Put it this way, try this scenario: A white American couple move to Beijing because of a job transfer. They live there for forty years. They never make Chinese friends. They never learn Mandarin. They don't even recognize common Chinese foods. They choose to only associate with other white Americans who have come to Beijing to work. Their children are born and raised in Beijing, but in a city populated by millions of Chinese, they also only choose to associate with other white Americans children. For forty years, in Beijing.</p>

<p>By your beliefs, Chinese acquaintances and neighbors (but certainly not friends) of this white American family have zero right to feel offended in the slightest. It doesn't matter that this family has lived on Chinese soil for decades. It doesn't matter that their children were born and raised in China. They don't speak Chinese. They don't have Chinese friends. They don't eat or even recognize Chinese foods. They only keep tabs on American culture, only watching American TV shows, listening to American music, and hanging out with only other white Americans, or if there aren't white Americans, any other Westerners.

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<p>that's actually pretty close to the truth. foreigners in china tend to bunch up in expatriate colonies, send their kids to international schools, never really bother learning mandarin(the 4 different tones of mandarin are probably the most important part of chinese, and i almost never hear expatriates use them) and are probably less integrated into mainstream chinese society than FOBs are to american society. my cousin goes to an international school in beijing and she is pretty much the only chinese person there. </p>

<p>and to be honest, most native chinese really could care less. in developing countries like china your concerns are more about feeding your family and trying to pay rent than trying to integrate minorities into everyday chinese society. the attitude amongst the "lao bai xing"(ordinary citizens) is they view foreigners as an oligarchy. sorry if its harsh but it's the truth. </p>

<p>i don't kno what it's like in other large asian cities, but as someone who was born there and visits frequently that's just my observation. im not trying to be offensive(i actually really appreciate your idealism), but the world works differently. that's just the way it is.</p>

<p>Over the past few day's I've read several articles descibring Asian cultures, Japan and China in particular, as "very racist". I was surprised by this as in my experience it is not the case. </p>

<p>The thing that annoys the heck out of me is when Americans/Westerners go to these countries and say stuff like, "WOW! Your culture is so exotic, so novel." This is not respect or interest in a culture, it is amusement and very shallow.</p>

<p>This is always the case, I guess sometimes a person is just more comfortable hanging out with people who act and culturally related to them. Trust me, I'm attending a predominantly white private college and you rarely see white people hanging out with colored people. Colored students usually stick together and white people stick with white people. (Of course, there are exemptions to that but it is soo rare to see it) Its so sad but that is the reality. BTW my school is # 1 in GREEK LIFE! Everything seems to revolve around the GREEK LIFE!! worst than that most of the greeks are WHITE. Rarely you will see a colored person in a Greek Frat/Sorority.</p>

<p>If you can get your hands on a September 2003 Atlantic Monthly, read "People Like Us" by David Brooks; it discusses how people tend to like to "group themselves with people who are basically like themselves." Unfortunately, the on-line article requires a subscription.</p>

<p>lol when foriegners come to america they change their names to like</p>

<p>jimmy chang, john wang or like sam patel. </p>

<p>but u dont see westeners in asia changing their name to</p>

<p>tu wan Williams or balakhrishna smith.. not for a 1000 years.</p>

<p>tis why westerners conquered our countries so easily. tis why we lack national pride.</p>

<p>this is all an observation on my part, and has nothing to do with this thread.</p>

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Trust me, I'm attending a predominantly white private college and you rarely see white people hanging out with colored people. Colored students usually stick together

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<p>Maybe its because you still throw around the phrase "colored people."</p>

<p>Come on dude. I'm not all for the PC police but please.</p>

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but u dont see westeners in asia changing their name to</p>

<p>tu wan Williams or balakhrishna smith.. not for a 1000 years.

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<p>How many Westerners do you know go to Asia to work as off-the-boat immigrants and NOT business transfers? You don't see Westerners going to China or India and managing nail salons or gas stations. If it were that way, I think you would see "Tu Wan Williams" and "Balakrishna Smith."</p>

<p>"Westerners do you know go to Asia to work as off-the-boat immigrants and NOT business transfers? You don't see Westerners going to China or India and managing nail salons or gas stations."</p>

<p>if that ever were to happen, indians would change to fit your needs. not the other way around. not to be stereotypical but white people deem their race as the greatest and that wont change. i dont even think i need to cite examples for this.</p>

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not to be stereotypical but white people deem their race as the greatest and that wont change.

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<p>Chinese once thought their civilization was the center of the universe. And they had good justifications for it. But the last couple of centuries wasn't tops in Chinese history, was it?</p>

<p>Every period of time has a "dominant" culture/nation that thinks they are the greatest ever. And then a century later its another culture/nation who's "better." If Chinese people, who have an incredibly rich and poweful history, can come to America and change their names to Western names, I can see how one day-- who knows-- Westerners would come as immigrants and refugees to Asia and change their names to Chinese, Korean, Indian etc names.</p>

<p>man, if i say anymore this topics gonna go way off track.</p>

<p>b/w my aim wasnt at white people, it is at prideless asians and indians.</p>

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it is at prideless asians and indians.

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<p>Personally, I don't believe having a Western first name when you were born and raised in a Western country is lacking ethnic pride. I don't think someone named Jim Chaudhuri or Kelly Park or David Chen is lacking ethnic pride.</p>

<p>if u were born in america and raised in america, then the least you can do is hold your mother-country's name proudly. chances are you have no other connection to your mother country.</p>