Comments on: Talking About Race…

by: Barbara Noblog

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 07:37:06 +0000

I simply do not agree with Jane Brown’s concept of “friendship”. While I think we all choose our friends for a myriad of different reasons (some reasons well understood by us,some not), Brown’s approach strikes me as both callous and in-authentic. I just don’t see my fellow travelers upon this planet as put here to fulfill my agenda….no matter how nobly I may frame that agenda. The level of self-interest this would take, the idea of building a friendship on this motivation, this objectifying of another human being, all of this is fundamentally wrong to me. Maybe this could work if you entered into the relationship by sharing your motivation from the get-go. I don’t know. Sadly,it all reminds me of the type of woman who, somehow, can only fall in “love” with rich men. Bleeech.

Now,we happen to operate within somewhat diverse circles and yes,we have long term friends who are not white. Real and authentic friendships … just the kinds of friendships that I want my future daughter to enjoy. What I don’t want is to show her a world where I use people.

by: Michaela

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 21:12:00 +0000

I caught the link from Johnny, where I lurk. It is easy to see why her ideas are controversial. My hubs and I are white. I was born in the US and he is from Scotland. Funny accent and all. My daughter is not white. She is a Pacific Islander, Samoan, with beautiful brown skin and huge dark eyes. We live in the very diverse SF/Bay Area. Our city is extremely diverse with a large Asian, Filipino, Indian, Afghan, Hispanic, and AA population. We are fortunate enough to also have a large Pacific Islander population in the area, but not specifically in our city. That said, are we good friends with many people of color? No, not really. She has friends of all ethnicities at school, which is different. My daughter takes Polynesian dance lessons and her teacher is Samoan. There are many Samoans in the Halau that we are friends with, but we still are not close personal friends with them. I taking drumming lessons there and have gotten to know many better than before, but other than performances, festivals and such, we don’t really socialize together. Through various activities, we’ve made other Samoan friends, but don’t see them very often. I thought it was some flaw in me, but after a few experiences I came to realize that a large part of it has to do with our cultural backgrounds and how we were raised. There are many things we simply don’t have in common, past or present.

I’ve given up feeling guilty that we are not more socially integrated than we are. I would welcome having more friends of color. Heck, I would welcome more friends, period. Most of my good friends are either my family or a group that lives about an hour away so we don’t get together that often. While the thought of engineering relationships is very unappealing to me, and my “engineering” skills apparently suck, I have made some effort. And I do wonder if like a previous commenter said it has something to do with the underlying vibe of the connection being due to ethnicity, rather than a true, personal connection. The local Islander community has been very welcoming, but I lack many of the experiences they have.

At this point, my daughter has good connections with people of her culture and has been exposed to different types of families to some degree. We’ve met the infamous M3 and several families at one of M3’s adoptive parents picnics. Yes, we were the only family with a Samoan child rather than Chinese, but that is mostly because our adoption is relatively rare. Would Ms. Brown find this ideal? Probably not. But it seems to be working for us.

by: OmegaMom

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:52:34 +0000

I’ve thought about this a lot. It’s very disturbing to me to “target” people for friendship, especially when (like Atomic Mama) you find it hard to make friends to begin with! One advantage we have up the hill from you (I do think I “know” you from our local email list!) is that the university is partnering with a lot of Chinese colleges and there’s a growing population of Asian folks, so the friendship making opportunities are greater and less forced.

My husband is trying to wangle a way in his agency to get a position in China for a few years; this will take a while, though. He’s also working in a volunteer civil rights position in his agency, so he is getting quite a collection of API friends…unfortunately, they are scattered around the country, or down in Phx.

A couple who was on our adoption trip is signing up to teach English in China next year, an opportunity that is difficult for many, but they have jobs that they can segue back into when they return.

We do tend to become locked into our insular worlds, and one of the great values of having adopted our dotter is that we’ve been forced to peek out of our world and see that there’s more out there.

As for JB–sigh. I find her “my way or the highway” approach very off-putting.

by: Johnny

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 14:48:16 +0000

As one of the “targeted members” of the race Jane Brown says you need to rub elbows with, I think I would feel uncomfortable and…well, a bit “used”. What about the feelings of the person Jane Brown is trying to become buds with? I’d feel like…ummm, you wouldn’t have given me a second thought, except I have slanted eyes.

I would say, I find this offensive(!), but I don’t. I find it (the thoughts of Jane Brown) something that may have worked FOR HER, but…maybe she does live that PC lifestyle.

I, on the other hand, want friendships to be formed for reasons other than physical traits first.

Ask “R”. If someone came up to him and said, “Hey, I need to form friends with some Native Americans. How ’bout it?” What’s the first thoughts from his head on this?

by: wzgirl

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 06:39:55 +0000

Even though we live in the SF/Bay Area, an extrememly diverse locale as you know - this is still an issue. Yes, we have the diversity, but making friends with others seems so much harder as we age. Recently we had an opportunity to connect with a Chinese couple. I was very excited! But, ya know, it was a flop. A heartbreaking flop. I felt that they didn’t like us. I felt like I’d done something wrong…even though the lunch was delicious & everyone said so. Still nobody asked for anybody’s number or even pretended to plan to get together afterward. After much rumination, I wondered if it may have been slightly related to my heartfelt desire to become friends with them b/c of their race…and not because of some true, innate connection of our sameness. That may sound strange, but, really…how do you decide who you want to become friends with anyway? This was extremely new and “first date-ish”, but to be honest, I’d held that desire in my heart when i’d invited them over for lunch. I thought, “Well, we have the adoption thing in common…the agency thing in common…the location thing in common…why wouldn’t we be friends?” I don’t think that i took into consideration the differences in culture, or the effect that the unsaid desires to connect due to race might have had upon my seemingly innocent invite to lunch may have had?

by: Jacquie

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 00:56:32 +0000

Again, late, but just wanted to tell you how much I’ve enjoyed these posts. The one thing I feel uncomfortable about is the making friends of different races just for the sake of having friends of different races. I mean, how does one do that? Um, hey you….. I need more Black/Hispanic/Asian friends, would you please hang out with me? Awkward. But now that I’m actively thinking about it, maybe I’ll recognize more potential friend situations that present themselves and take advantage?

by: Maggie

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 21:09:49 +0000

Interesting take on the “engineering” of friends and I’m glad to hear her say that. I’ve felt weird about it, but also wonder if all our friendships aren’t engineered in some way. If we truly like each other, should it really matter?

by: Nicole

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 20:35:49 +0000

I love SF better than any city out there, but I sure dont love the earthquakes. San Diego is grand, but definately pricey these days.

by: SBird

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 17:19:32 +0000

Thanks, everyone, for the comments. I was hoping for longish comments because I think this is such an important, but tough, subject. Jane Brown definitely addressed people’s reluctance to “engineer” racially diverse friendships in the workshop I attended with her…she basically said, “get over it.” She told a story of meeting a black woman in an airport who had the same ring on as Brown did, so she approached her, discovered that they both live in Phoenix, then discovered that they both have jobs as diversity consultants, and now they are friends. Her point was, “stop whining and get going.” Ya think this is why she’s so controversial?

We would rather be in San Francisco than San Diego (and discussed the possibility), but the plane rides down south for R. would just be too much. The palm tree farm is in the low desert east of San Diego, so we’ll end up in San Diego or Palm Springs in two years or so. My in-laws live in San Diego now, so we’re there quite often, and there is an Asian district and school systems in certain areas that offer quite a diverse racial mix. So, that’s the plan. We never could have done this, of course, had we stayed in academia, where the annual job market drives your decisions about where to live. And I will really miss the desert mountains.

by: walternatives

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 18:50:30 +0000

Great blog series, SBird, with much food for thought. What the Goober and I have going for us on this is that the Goobie, though white, is from another country. My daughter and I will be the only Americans in the house while Daddy will retain his (European) citizenship and funny accent; Daddy will be the odd-man out, so to speak. The Goob is also going to teach our daughter his mother-tongue; we want to raise our daughter as bi-lingual. So while we don’t currently have many friends from other races, our daughter will grow up knowing that people come to America via different routes.