Interracial Friendships: how can I fit in with other races?

When you look at the picture of me and my closest college friends, one thing really stands out about us: we’re diverse. We’ve almost covered all of the overarching ethnic groups including African American, Latino, Caucasian, and Asian.

My whole life, my friendships have been that way, and I’m lucky to say that I have friends from all sorts of ethnicities, mixes, and countries from around the world.

(Here comes the big but)…BUT, what’s interesting is that in friendships, kind of like romantic relationships, people tend to gravitate towards the familiar, and in many cases, race is the familiarity.

According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, many multiracial children, “may develop a public identity with the "minority" race, while maintaining a private interracial identity with family and friends.” Now I can’t attest to that specific example, but I also cannot tell a lie: I act differently depending on what race I am hanging out with.

In front of my white friends, I don’t use as much slang, I don’t talk about the latest rap album to have dropped last week, and I freely discuss books and politics. On the flip side, when I hang out with black people, I spit the urban dictionary like I’ve memorized it, hair is always a hot topic to discuss, and we always end up cracking up about crazy family reunion stories.

But in both cases, I am not myself. I cannot be myself, or at least I don’t feel comfortable being myself. It almost feels as if I live two distinct lives that can never cross paths or else either side will know I’ve been partly faking it all my life.

Spanish and mixed: best friends

Since I am mixed, I can relate with both sides I am mixed with. I was raised by a black man and a white European mother so to interact with both of those groups of people is pretty easy for me now. But it feels as if those relationships can only go so far because there’s a level of understanding that is not met on either side.

For this I have no solution. I’m still figuring this one out. But I’ve realized that I am most happy when I am completely myself despite what race I surround myself with. That’s why I feel so comfortable around my closest friends. Race doesn’t get in the way of us having a close friendship.

And like Katt Williams says, you need your white friends, you need your black friends, and you need your Spanish friends. Even though he’s just joking around, he makes a great point: we need friendship with people outside of our own race because that friendship enriches our lives and teaches us so much more than what we can learn just by judging other races ourselves.

To see an example of a “lack of understanding” between two races, check out Dave Chappelle’s schpeal here (forward to 3:15) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2GqRTgi5WI