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Post by Ganbare! on Mar 26, 2010 2:17:46 GMT -5
Have you ever thought that beyond one's culture and personality, ethnic appearance plays a major role in bonding?
I never really noticed until now but when I think about my past friendships the people that count most are ethnic despite accounting for less than half of my network. There always seem to have been a certain distance between myself and Caucasians although we largely share the same education.
How diverse is your social circle? Do you get along better with certain groups?
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Post by FreckleFoot on Mar 26, 2010 6:09:40 GMT -5
I have not noticed race having any influence upon my friendships, but it certainly exists for other people. I would say it is more pronounced among monoracial individuals. This is illustrated well in Toronto: you see many different ethnicities, but they rarely mingle with one another. The Chinese stick to the Chinese, the black people stick with the black people, the South Asians stick to South Asians and the white people stick with white people. They segregate themselves from each other. I have even noticed that sometimes when Chinese people realise I'm almost 'one of them' they believe we have to support one another and stay together as a team. It's almost as if I've been granted an upgrade in friendship status because I share some racial background in common with them.
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Post by Ganbare! on Mar 26, 2010 19:57:44 GMT -5
A few years ago I was part of a Korean gang and the only non-Koreans were one pure Chinese and me, the reason lies in the fact we shared similar interests in music and dance otherwise they were quite a segregated bunch which I am not. Even if we weren't from the peninsula they still regarded us as close because of Asian blood.
Like it was discussed on another topic a sizable part of the EA community feel more comfortable around minorities, we can discuss subjects that we couldn't raise with Caucasians, there's a tacit mutual understanding.
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Post by FreckleFoot on Mar 27, 2010 10:12:47 GMT -5
Your situation with the Korean gang is something I am afraid of if I'm spending time only with people from one race: that they start to make racist comments as a way to strengthen bonds between them and separate themselves from others. 'Us against them.' I don't want to be a part of that.
It is true that, in some aspects, it can be much more comfortable to speak with others who aren't white. e.g. I see that many white people cannot imagine what it is like to suffer racism and, as a result, they can never understand. Due to this they also tend to be completely blind to subtle racism and unwittingly aid its survival that way (if the victim reacts they treat them like they're crazy because they can't see why they should be offended; the perpetrator believes he/she can get away with it). I suppose then, if one wants to talk about ethnicity a lot, the race of friends is important.
I don't know about everyone else, but depending on which friends I am with, I will act slightly differently. There are some things I can do or talk about with some friends and not with others. e.g. I have a friend I can be silly with but can't be laid back and relaxed with, a calmer friend I can have philosophical discussions with but can't rely on for help/advice... but I don't think I have anyone I can do everything with. This is usually more important for me when choosing who to be friends with or which friend to talk to, but I do think that if I want to talk about race I am far more likely to choose a friend who isn't white. Just as I would choose a friend who likes sports and adventure if I wanted to try rock climbing, I would choose a friend who would be more likely to understand race-related issues and that often depends on the ethnicity of that friend.
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Post by Ganbare! on May 15, 2010 20:36:44 GMT -5
^I did not mean to orientate the debate towards race rivality just wondering if EANers get along with certain groups better than others considering we often have several cultures and if they factored race in either consciously or not?
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Post by betahat on May 15, 2010 21:06:46 GMT -5
I would say my closest friends are roughly proportional to the share of different races that I came into contact with growing up. That said I only have one close friend who isn't a native English speaker (he's Colombian of European origin) so there is probably a bit of skewing away from the (mostly) Asians I've met in university who aren't native speakers. Once again language trumps race for me (with a bit of culture thrown in).
I don't know if it's unusual or not but I've never had a close EA friend. In high school I was friends with a half-Indian kid (though we were also academic rivals and both quite competitive) but never that close, I met a couple later in college but we didn't share a lot of interests, and I haven't met any in grad school out here, though I see plenty on the streets.
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Post by milkman's baby on May 24, 2010 7:50:05 GMT -5
Almost all of my friends happen to be white-washed, middle class black girls with low self-esteem and identity issues. There were no Asians or Latinos where I lived, and my friends had the same situation as me in the sense that we didn't fit in with the whites but definitely didn't belong with the stereotypical ghetto mentality black kids in school. Even when I'm in more diverse environments with every race existant, I still find myself gravitating (I say unintentionally, but perhaps it's subconsciously intentional) toward the quiet, white-washed black people or Latinos. I usually just don't get along with whites or Asians, I don't know why.
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Post by Ganbare! on May 28, 2010 3:40:50 GMT -5
This is illustrated well in Toronto: you see many different ethnicities, but they rarely mingle with one another. The Chinese stick to the Chinese, the black people stick with the black people, the South Asians stick to South Asians and the white people stick with white people. They segregate themselves from each other. I have even noticed that sometimes when Chinese people realise I'm almost 'one of them' they believe we have to support one another and stay together as a team. It's almost as if I've been granted an upgrade in friendship status because I share some racial background in common with them. Multiculturalism has sadly resulted in segregation and ethnic rivality everywhere it has been enacted. Eurasians have such a diverse range of experiences my efforts to establish a general trend encompassing all EAs fail. Race per se is mostly irrelevant in my life although the majority of my friends are White almost all ethnic groups are roughly equally represented, Blacks aside as there hardly were any wherever I lived. Besides recent efforts to befriend more Asians, I never consciously favored a particular group over another probably because of being influenced by the French universalist way of viewing individuals as human beings not races. If Caucasians happen to be overrepresented in my social circle, I think it has more to do with having in common more hobbies or character traits and them being the majority wherever I lived than anything else.
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Post by jefe on May 28, 2010 22:25:54 GMT -5
^ So, you mean it is more a cutural and social identity that links you up with other people, and for this reason you tended to gravitate to these people, and it "just so happens" that the majority of them are Caucasian.
I still wonder why I had such a different experience. I was born and raised in the USA, lived in (or attended schools with) majority black, Latino and white neighborhoods at different times. In fact, I have vivid memories of having my school district re-organized so that suddenly I was going to a *slight* majority black school (my parents decided to MOVE as they knew it would be overwhelming majority in a couple years), then moving into an all-white neighborhood as a child, and being terrorized as the *non-white* family infiltrating the neighborhood.
And growing up, I did not make many friends. So, I cannot say that I gravitated toward any racial group.
But it is interesting to note that, once I had some more control over my exposure to social circles (around age 16), my circle became increasingly Asian - to be the majority by the time I was age 18-19. And by the time I was age 21-22, the majority of them also tended to be NON-native English speakers, ie, immigrants / foreign students who did not speak English most of the time. I spent most of my non-family time in the USA with people who lived outside the mainstream and who did not speak English most of the time, if at all.
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Post by Ganbare! on May 28, 2010 23:47:28 GMT -5
^Although I lived in pretty diverse places, Whites almost always accounted for the majority, at school, in the neighborhood etc. Before coming to this site I never thought race nor being part Asian mattered at all, less because of a lack of awareness than because of my universalist vision. It hit me in the face when I returned to Canada which I had left at 11, the diversity I was accustomed to, the racelessness that characterized children we were turned into communautarianism, people still bond outside of their racial group but they always favor their own over others, assimilated individuals excepted. I'm not saying being rootless is favourable to segregation they are both two extremes that I don't endorse.
I've said on numerous occasions I was White-washed but it's not completely true, my knowledge of Chinese culture definitely still requires a lot of work but I'm familiar with many other non-Caucasian cultures as I was actively exposed to the diversity surrounding me growing up. I've always founded my friendships on grounds of hobby and personality not class, ethnic or culture so even if I'm myself multicultural and favorable to diversity, Caucasians still happen to match my criteria best regardless of their open-mindedness (they generally are) as I have better chemistry with them probably because my tastes are mostly Western.
So despite a recent aspiration to get closer to EAs/Asians, universalism is too deeply rooted in my values to favor a group over another therefore I'll always focus on people's individuality rather than their race at least in bonding. I wish to never fall in the trap of befriending bad people simply because we belong to the same race/culture, shunning great individuals because they are not part of it. On a related note I distinguish culture from hobbies and race, outside of the strict context of friendship I personally favor Asian culture over others because I'm more attracted to it, obviously all these things tend to overlap but for me it's fundamental not to mix them up because confusing them could lead to a terrible quality of life.
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quiapo
Junior Member
Posts: 188
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Post by quiapo on May 30, 2010 21:22:58 GMT -5
Though I have had a mix of ethnic origins among my friends, throughout my childhood and youth, the relationships that have persisted half a century later are my friendships with people of chinese origin. Chinese is the one language of my ethnic mix, that I never learned to speak. Physically, I can pass for chinese more easily than any other race.
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