Speaker 1: Pushing. You know, I did have one white friend who
Speaker 1: I won't name, and his parents conveyed to me that
Speaker 1: I was a bad influence on him. Really, I don't
Speaker 1: think if it would do with race, It just had
Speaker 1: to do with me, big asshole. Oh that's funny.
Speaker 2: I'm Khalil Jibron Muhammad.
Speaker 1: I'm Ben Austen. We're two best friends, one black, one white.
Speaker 2: I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is
Speaker 2: some of my best friends are.
Speaker 1: Some of my best friends are dot dot dot. In
Speaker 1: this show, we wrestled with the challenges and the absurdities
Speaker 1: of a deeply divided and unequal country.
Speaker 2: And today we are finally talking about us. The interracial
Speaker 2: friendship the show is based on.
Speaker 1: That's right. We're going to tell you how you too
Speaker 1: can have a successful interracial friendship. Three quick ways to
Speaker 1: do it, guarantee.
Speaker 2: And make your life happier.
Speaker 1: Just kidding, but we are going to talk about interracial friendships.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the social science behind them,
Speaker 1: what the social science gets right, what it gets wrong,
Speaker 1: and why these friendships are important.
Speaker 2: So I've been thinking a lot about our friendship. Man,
Speaker 2: Remember that time that makes me happy?
Speaker 1: To hear.
Speaker 2: Remember that time we were on the like this big
Speaker 2: public radio talk show promoting some of the Best Friends Are.
Speaker 1: Of course, that was one of our first promos that
Speaker 1: we were on a show, and we were talking about
Speaker 1: basically the conceit of our show, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: one of us is black, one of us is white, right,
Speaker 1: and that our friendship didn't necessarily mean a lot as
Speaker 1: far as changing structural issues, but we're here to talk
Speaker 1: about to talk about what we are trying to do,
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 2: So here we start taking all these calls. It's a
Speaker 2: call in show, and people are like, well, I'm so
Speaker 2: happy to talk to you Ben and Khalil, because you know,
Speaker 2: my daughter's sixteen and she's white and she just offended
Speaker 2: this black girl at our school and she has no
Speaker 2: idea what to do. Can you help us figure this out?
Speaker 1: And it was caller after call her. So the next
Speaker 1: caller was a black woman who was like, this woman
Speaker 1: at work is trying to be my friend, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if I like her. We became the interracial
Speaker 1: buddy whisperers, that's right. It was sort of the opposite
Speaker 1: of what we were hoping to do, but we leaned
Speaker 1: into it. You know, we were like, we weren't going
Speaker 1: to tell people we were going to do this, and
Speaker 1: that's right. In a way, maybe we were like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is this is much more professionally lucrative, like guess
Speaker 1: is what we should be.
Speaker 2: Doing, or just you know, maybe much more helpful. So
Speaker 2: it got us to thinking about how rare these friendships are.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, And what does.
Speaker 2: The actual research on the frequency and significance of interracial
Speaker 2: friendships actually tell us?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so you're right. So let's look at some research,
Speaker 1: some social science, and maybe we're going to learn something
Speaker 1: about about interracial friendships, but maybe we'll also learn something
Speaker 1: about ourselves and what makes us friends. I like that
Speaker 1: it's a win win, or maybe what we discover is
Speaker 1: like we shouldn't be friends. So we looked at this
Speaker 1: study conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and they
Speaker 1: did surveys of American friendship friendship networks in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: And what we found is there's a ton of other
Speaker 1: research it also supports their findings, including from Pew, and
Speaker 1: what they found is white Americans their friendship networks are
Speaker 1: on average ninety percent white so of all their friends,
Speaker 1: nine out of ten of them are white. Yes, and
Speaker 1: more than that, sixty seven percent their friendship networks are
Speaker 1: like one hundred percent white. Are all white? No friends
Speaker 1: who are outside their race, That's right.
Speaker 2: If you go to their Facebook pages, there is not
Speaker 2: a single black or brown face anywhere to be found. Now,
Speaker 2: turns out for black folks they are a little bit
Speaker 2: more engaging.
Speaker 1: Outside of the race.
Speaker 2: The study said that Black American friendship networks were around
Speaker 2: seventy eight percent black, so not quite as bad as
Speaker 2: white folks, but surprisingly not as good as it is
Speaker 2: for Latinos and Asians.
Speaker 1: Some people would think that Latinos and Asians would be
Speaker 1: even more exclusive, but it's actually the opposite. They have
Speaker 1: more friends, even more friends who are outside their social circles,
Speaker 1: who are of different races.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and some researchers speculate it's the smallness of at
Speaker 2: least for the Asian population that they kind of can't
Speaker 2: help but have people outside of their community, even their
Speaker 2: size in the population. All right, So big summary for
Speaker 2: this research. Essentially, compared to people of color, white people
Speaker 2: have the smallest percentage of friends who are not white,
Speaker 2: and even more interesting than that like, the more education
Speaker 2: white people get doesn't change this. It's still the same problem.
Speaker 1: Come on, white people, come on, white people, Come on,
Speaker 1: my people, Come on, my people. We need to work on.
Speaker 2: This, so listen. In nineteen fifty four, this researcher named
Speaker 2: Gordon Allport wrote this book.
Speaker 1: Called The Nature. You're using the way back machine. We're
Speaker 1: going all the way back to nineteen fifty I'm a historian.
Speaker 1: Don't I get to it? I interrupted you, but keep
Speaker 1: on going, all right, all right.
Speaker 2: So this is important because this is kind of like
Speaker 2: where this whole set of ideas came from.
Speaker 1: And it's called what's the name of the study?
Speaker 2: Again, I'm say the name of the study is called
Speaker 2: The Nature of Prejudice. And Gordon Allport is famous now
Speaker 2: for establishing what's called contact theory. And basically it's really simple.
Speaker 2: He argued the different racists spending time together in pursuit
Speaker 2: of a common goal would reduce prejudice. Okay, And he
Speaker 2: actually was doing this research at a time when the
Speaker 2: military had just been desegregated in nineteen forty eight, a
Speaker 2: little bit after World War Two, and some of our
Speaker 2: listeners who recognized nineteen fifty four was a pivotal year
Speaker 2: for Brown versus Board of Education what schools were desegregated.
Speaker 1: So this was so this is really thinking about about
Speaker 1: right at the start of integrated America and how to
Speaker 1: do it out of it segregated America.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the segregation was essentially supposedly on life support.
Speaker 2: And so Allport was a social psychologist and he figured, hey,
Speaker 2: we psychologists should be able to help solve for how
Speaker 2: white people in particular get comfortable with getting to know
Speaker 2: black people and opening up society. So he theorized that
Speaker 2: in order for prejudice to be reduced, in order for
Speaker 2: interracial friendships to thrive, like hours, four conditions would need
Speaker 2: to be met. And I'm just going to simplify things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So like.
Speaker 2: There's equality, cooperation, and clear rules. So does this make sense?
Speaker 1: Yes, equality, commonality, cooperation, and clear rules. Maybe maybe a
Speaker 1: way to understand it is that apply it to our friendship.
Speaker 1: You have this, we have this lifelong friendship. That's right.
Speaker 1: We've been friends since freshman year of high school yep,
Speaker 1: and here we are, you know, thirty some years later.
Speaker 1: And I think in terms of commonality, let's start there
Speaker 1: that you and I surprisingly only had one class in
Speaker 1: high school together, but we're in the same school and
Speaker 1: we actually meet at a workplace. We work at Hyde
Speaker 1: Park Computers together in ninth grade. We start a job together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, our real origin story is I'm fourteen years old
Speaker 2: working in a computer store as a freshman in high
Speaker 2: school and at some point I break my thumb and
Speaker 2: I need help.
Speaker 1: And here you get hired, You get high, get hired
Speaker 1: to do the most rude, mentary work, and you're my boss,
Speaker 1: you're my superior. And yeah, I mean we didn't instantly
Speaker 1: become friends, but we sort of at least like in
Speaker 1: this idea, we're in the same space, we're hanging out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's pause on that for a minute, because this
Speaker 2: whole thing about commonality and equality is really about like
Speaker 2: people meeting us peers where there isn't hierarchy because you know,
Speaker 2: the old, the old historical problem is that you know,
Speaker 2: black people were slaves to white people, and so it
Speaker 2: wasn't about like proximity or simple contact if it was
Speaker 2: a very hierarchical relationship. So we are in this workplace
Speaker 2: experience together, which is really when we start to become friends.
Speaker 2: And then that was like September October I remember our
Speaker 2: freshman year. By spring we're both playing tennis together on
Speaker 2: the tennis.
Speaker 1: S that's right. And then on the tennis team, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm kind of the tennis prodigy star.
Speaker 2: Oh is that right? Don't forget I have most improved
Speaker 2: player two years in a row. I got a matter
Speaker 2: of time.
Speaker 1: I will never let you forget that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it is the context. It's the classic content where
Speaker 2: black and white people come together, you know, break down
Speaker 2: their prejudices in pursuit of a common goal and become friends. Right,
Speaker 2: that's the way it's supposed to work.
Speaker 1: We're still equals. We're still equals in the sense of
Speaker 1: we're operating the same sphere and under the same rules
Speaker 1: in a.
Speaker 2: Way, Yeah, because if you think about it, in the
Speaker 2: moment that Allport was doing this work, like the military,
Speaker 2: was this space where people came together as equals for
Speaker 2: the common purpose of defending the nation with a shared
Speaker 2: values of patriotism and clear rules of like how do
Speaker 2: you work together? And so whether it's a sports team
Speaker 2: for a lot of black and white Americans over the
Speaker 2: years and certainly today, or whether it's a school environment
Speaker 2: or even a workplace, it's this idea that if people
Speaker 2: are in a common space, generally in a flat environment
Speaker 2: where everyone has kind of equality, then good things will happen.
Speaker 1: That's the idea. Yeah, so we have to we're going
Speaker 1: from contact, which is different from a friendship that lasts
Speaker 1: a lifetime, essentially, Like, how does that happen? That's right?
Speaker 1: And all right? So I'd say one is, we come
Speaker 1: from this community. We're allowed for just this contact to happen, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that seems pretty rare.
Speaker 2: Well, let's just unpack that, a man, we come from
Speaker 2: a straight up integrated neighborhood. Like there's probably like three
Speaker 2: of them, you know, in the state of Illinois, and
Speaker 2: maybe fifty around the country. And I'm obviously joking a
Speaker 2: bit here, but it's unusual that in and of itself
Speaker 2: is a bit unusual.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and maybe I mean, even thinking about that a
Speaker 1: little bit, so that neither of us was the only
Speaker 1: in the other circle. That's right.
Speaker 2: I think, if my memory serves me correctly, I have
Speaker 2: more white friends, meaning people I had called friend and
Speaker 2: hung out friends and hung out with, than you had
Speaker 2: white friends.
Speaker 1: That's possible. In fact, I thought at some point that
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be friends with you because you
Speaker 1: were two, you had too many white friends. I was worried,
Speaker 1: but then you know you you pass the test eventually. Okay.
Speaker 2: So look, these four conditions at all port set up
Speaker 2: defined an entire field of how do you reduce prejudice
Speaker 2: by making friends or making contact with somebody else? Okay,
Speaker 2: But it turns out that most people didn't have this experience.
Speaker 2: The data we just looked at in twenty twenty two
Speaker 2: shows us just how badly this hole turned out over
Speaker 2: these last several decades.
Speaker 1: So we know that now that that that these groups
Speaker 1: are really exclusive, that people white people, but even of
Speaker 1: other races aren't hanging out together. Yep. And so since
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, segregation is outlawed in the United States,
Speaker 1: and yet people still aren't coming together. And so when
Speaker 1: we think about the spaces historically or even over these
Speaker 1: last sixty seventy years where people have different race are
Speaker 1: coming together, So where are they? They might be in schools, right, yep, yep,
Speaker 1: that's right, they might be in the military.
Speaker 2: That's right. Probably one of the biggest areas that people
Speaker 2: often celebrate as places where prejudice and segregation broke down.
Speaker 1: In fact, once we were at a baseball game in Denver,
Speaker 1: you and me, and because we're together, everyone around us
Speaker 1: was saying, you guys must have been in the military together, right,
Speaker 1: because they had never seen like black and white friends together.
Speaker 1: That's right. You know, sports becomes this kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, almost like a metaphor for bringing people together
Speaker 1: under these you know, equal areas where people with different
Speaker 1: experiences could bond.
Speaker 2: And I guess William Hollywood Movies telling this story.
Speaker 1: Yes, in a workplace, right, so places that are beyond
Speaker 1: your own private sphere, which are somehow public, yep.
Speaker 2: And so for you and me, like that's kind of
Speaker 2: our story, right. We come of age in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: meeting in our integrated high school.
Speaker 1: And you know, so we're in this integrated space of
Speaker 1: all these ways, and a lot of people even from
Speaker 1: our high school and shared our experiences, didn't become lifelong
Speaker 1: friends with people of different races, just by the statistics
Speaker 1: we're even cited.
Speaker 2: Which creates this really, this a conundrum, right because to
Speaker 2: some degree, you know, we are a product of a
Speaker 2: moment of integration in America. We grew up in an
Speaker 2: integrated neighborhood, We go to an integrated high school. We
Speaker 2: have these integrated experiences, and it's like it turns out
Speaker 2: we are like rare creatures relative to the vast majority
Speaker 2: of white or black people.
Speaker 1: But I also don't think I don't think there are
Speaker 1: any conversations like, you know, you should have even on
Speaker 1: the other sense, oh you should have you know, friends
Speaker 1: across racial boundaries, you should have more friends. I don't
Speaker 1: think it was just talked about did you have conversations
Speaker 1: like that of like the meaning of this not at all.
Speaker 2: I mean, at best, I would say we really were
Speaker 2: kind of in an integrated neighborhood on the South side
Speaker 2: Chicago and High Park. It was largely middle class, which
Speaker 2: mitigated against the ways in which low income people often
Speaker 2: are doubly burdened and stigmatized, and in a way that
Speaker 2: like some people might be remembering their black friends from
Speaker 2: their suburban high school or something like, you know, I
Speaker 2: wasn't busted in to go to.
Speaker 1: School with you, right, and the community.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you didn't come from some like white part of
Speaker 2: town to go to this integrated high school. You lived
Speaker 2: in a black neighborhood. So there were some unique things
Speaker 2: about being in an integrated community. And I got to say,
Speaker 2: like I adopted your parents very early on. I called
Speaker 2: your parents Ma and Paul, Like, I can't remember a
Speaker 2: time when I haven't called them that. Now you called
Speaker 2: my mom.
Speaker 1: What shorty rough? She was a stand in mom, And
Speaker 1: so that sense too of our larger family circle sort
Speaker 1: of you know that this is being normalized and part
Speaker 1: of our experiences that And then I guess i'd say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't like my parents were the only
Speaker 1: white and Jewish adults you knew, and for me it
Speaker 1: was and like your mom was the only black woman
Speaker 1: I knew. That's right because student for those figures, because.
Speaker 2: You had a soon to be black mother in law Carol's.
Speaker 1: House, That's right, I was. Yeah, So this is the
Speaker 1: other thing about in you know, as we're dating across
Speaker 1: racial lines, do you think we ever talked about that
Speaker 1: of like what that meant beyond you know, the either
Speaker 1: the intrigue or the dangers or the significance. Did we
Speaker 1: I don't remember ever having a conversation specifically about like
Speaker 1: about about race and dating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point. I mean I don't remember
Speaker 2: like in our mutual friendship groups, there was definitely we
Speaker 2: weren't the only ones. But I have to say, like
Speaker 2: I mean, counterintuitive probably to other people, it was because
Speaker 2: of your black girlfriend now wife, Danielle, that I had
Speaker 2: two of my high school sweethearts. I mean, like it was.
Speaker 2: It was a win win for me. No matter how
Speaker 2: we look at.
Speaker 1: It, you might have not dated any black girls if
Speaker 1: it wasn't for me dating a black girl. Is what
Speaker 1: you're saying.
Speaker 2: No, that is not That is not what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: But befive, listen, We're going to talk more about this
Speaker 2: as we go from being boys to men and grow
Speaker 2: up and really unpack interracial friendships and look at a
Speaker 2: little bit more research to see how it helps us
Speaker 2: explain what's been going on in this country.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back after the break.
Speaker 1: All right, we are back on some of my best
Speaker 1: friends are and Khalil and I are talking about interracial friendships.
Speaker 1: This is a meta episode in a way. And Khalil,
Speaker 1: we've been thinking about how how studies, how research explains
Speaker 1: even our friendship. And so you had just said right
Speaker 1: before the break, it's one thing to be friends as kids,
Speaker 1: but but what does it mean to be friends as adults.
Speaker 1: That's a whole other. A whole other issue and what
Speaker 1: does it.
Speaker 2: Mean you just have a friendship that lasts, right. A
Speaker 2: lot of people were like, oh, yeah, you know one
Speaker 2: of my best friends was filling the blank when I
Speaker 2: was in high school. What I haven't talked to this
Speaker 2: person in twenty years.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So there's this book from twenty nineteen and it's
Speaker 1: written by several sociologists. It's called In the Company We Keep,
Speaker 1: and it's exactly about this subject. It's about interracial friendships
Speaker 1: and about this transition from childhood to adulthood. The authors
Speaker 1: looked at and analyzed Americans who were kids in seventh
Speaker 1: to twelfth grade in the nineteen nineties, essentially us right
Speaker 1: at this time when multiculturalism is being celebrated as like
Speaker 1: the American ideal. Yes, yes, And then they grow up
Speaker 1: and the researchers study them again in two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight when they're between they're about thirty years old. So
Speaker 1: we're in the Obama era, the so called post racial America.
Speaker 2: This wholehold we go from color blindness to post racialism
Speaker 2: with this, with these two cohorts of young people.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people fifteen thousand people to sort
Speaker 1: of think of that they were friends as teenagers what
Speaker 1: happened as adults?
Speaker 2: Right, These are fifteen thousand respondents. This is the basis
Speaker 2: of the study, and here's what they found. I mean,
Speaker 2: the simple story they found is that kids who attend
Speaker 2: more diverse schools like the one we went to were
Speaker 2: more likely to have what they call cross racial friendships
Speaker 2: as adults, even if they didn't have them as kids,
Speaker 2: meaning as younger kids. That's pretty big deal and helps
Speaker 2: to lay the foundation for you know how. The research
Speaker 2: tells us what are the necessary conditions for interracial friendships
Speaker 2: to thrive.
Speaker 1: So underlining that again, going to an interracial school is
Speaker 1: a huge deal. This is defining in terms of having
Speaker 1: cross racial friendships.
Speaker 2: Yes, but it turns out that even that reality and
Speaker 2: knowing that reality, going back to the nineteen fifties, at
Speaker 2: the end of legal segregation in the Brown Versus Board
Speaker 2: of Education decision, the line separating black and white people
Speaker 2: in the United States is still stronger than any other
Speaker 2: racial groups, meaning black and white people are still not together,
Speaker 2: which probably is as much a story about the failure
Speaker 2: of integration and housing in so many other spaces than
Speaker 2: anything else.
Speaker 1: So meaning they may not have gone to interracial schools exactly,
Speaker 1: and even if they had, they still it didn't last
Speaker 1: over time.
Speaker 2: Or that they went to schools, but people were being
Speaker 2: bussed and shuttled about and it wasn't actually extending in
Speaker 2: the classroom.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So in this same study, they also looked
Speaker 1: at interracial romantic relationships, so not just friendships but friends
Speaker 1: with benefits and got it, and they found the same thing.
Speaker 1: They found that you were much more likely to have
Speaker 1: across racial romantic relationship if you went to a diverse school,
Speaker 1: and they also found that you were more likely to
Speaker 1: get with somebody of a different race if you had
Speaker 1: a friend of a different race. That's me. That's the
Speaker 1: wingman theory of interracial day. If you want to date
Speaker 1: across racial lines, you need a wingman who's of the
Speaker 1: race you want to date. That's what it explains that.
Speaker 2: So what you're saying is it's only because of me
Speaker 2: that you have this beautiful black woman as your wife
Speaker 2: that you've had for how long have you all been married?
Speaker 2: I've lost track.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, a little bit, a little bit, But you
Speaker 1: might be right, you might be right, But these researchers
Speaker 1: are actually finding that if you actually have a more
Speaker 1: authentic relationship with another culture. It's more likely that this
Speaker 1: is a kind of real relationship. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, like essentially the hot that person's exotic to me
Speaker 2: kind of flash in the pan love interest is not
Speaker 2: what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I want to talk about when we grow up
Speaker 2: a little bit. So let's talk about college. Because to
Speaker 2: be honest with you, Ben, I mean, all that we've
Speaker 2: been talking about about our origin story, that's just four
Speaker 2: years of our relationship. We're going on like thirty seven.
Speaker 2: So and we you know, we didn't spend time together
Speaker 2: really after high school for long time. We both go
Speaker 2: our separate ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the truth is, like, so if we were
Speaker 1: in an interracial space as teenagers, we both go to
Speaker 1: predominantly white colleges.
Speaker 2: We both pronominantly white, overwhelmingly white.
Speaker 1: Overwhelmingly white. Yes, we go into these spaces and separately.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, right, So you're at the University of Rochester.
Speaker 2: I go to the University of Pennsylvania. And I have
Speaker 2: to tell you, man, I went to pen like I
Speaker 2: didn't know shit about structural racism. I mean, I know
Speaker 2: it's counterintuitive. Some people might think about my identity and
Speaker 2: all of that, and what I do today, but kind
Speaker 2: of the specialness of my childhood did not prepare me
Speaker 2: for what I encountered when I became five percent of
Speaker 2: pens black population in nineteen eighty nine, when I became
Speaker 2: a freshman and.
Speaker 1: You had a white roommate. Freshman year, I remember, I had.
Speaker 2: A white room mate, Peter.
Speaker 1: Like he was.
Speaker 2: He was taller than you, and I went from like,
Speaker 2: you know, tall tall buddy to even taller buddy. Peter
Speaker 2: and I got along swimmingly, but we did not become
Speaker 2: friends right we defined.
Speaker 1: I remember search. I remember visiting you on campus and
Speaker 1: staying in his bed and it was kind of funky. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, he wore the same blue jees literally all year long.
Speaker 2: I just honestly, by the end of the year they
Speaker 2: were standing up in the corner. But outside of Peter
Speaker 2: as my freshman year roommate. Out of four years at Penn,
Speaker 2: I literally met and kept as a close friend, one
Speaker 2: white guy.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just want to say, they're like, they're
Speaker 1: like twenty five white guys who are listening to this now,
Speaker 1: and They're like, damn, I thought I thought we were
Speaker 1: still friends.
Speaker 2: I thought, No, let me, I mean this sincerely, like
Speaker 2: if I had mostly white friends in high school, it
Speaker 2: was just the opposite. In college, my whole world became
Speaker 2: you know, African American this and that. I had tons
Speaker 2: of black friends. I joined a fraternity, to a black, traditional,
Speaker 2: historically black fraternity my freshman year, and I mean, it
Speaker 2: just it made my life wonderful. I mean, and there's
Speaker 2: no critique whatsoever. But it could not have been more
Speaker 2: different than what I'd experienced growing.
Speaker 1: Up, which is so interesting. So in this overwhelmingly white space,
Speaker 1: you create your own overwhelmingly black bubble within it.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean black people do that anyway, but you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: most of the world, when you're in segregated Black America
Speaker 2: or segregated white America, Yeah, black people figure out how
Speaker 2: to make sense of their smallness of population relative to
Speaker 2: white people in all the powerful ways white people exist
Speaker 2: among us.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I'm thinking what you said, and again how
Speaker 1: much I thought about structural racism before these dynamics. We
Speaker 1: just took so much for granted, it was weird going
Speaker 1: to a school that was overwhelmingly white. It was weird
Speaker 1: for me. And I'm thinking back to even teen years
Speaker 1: in youth, like one of my experiences or partly what
Speaker 1: defined my experience of being the only one in a
Speaker 1: lot of spaces.
Speaker 2: Oh, you mean being the only one guy among people.
Speaker 1: Which is which is a kind of valuable perspective to
Speaker 1: get to think about race, you know, to think about
Speaker 1: like what what most minorities experience all the time. It's
Speaker 1: just like and then to know like, oh, my whiteness
Speaker 1: is a thing rather than a neutral thing or it
Speaker 1: doesn't exist. You know that that whiteness is also race,
Speaker 1: because I'm being seen from my race right now. And
Speaker 1: to enter in a space where that that calculus never
Speaker 1: came up, it was disorienting. There wasn't the equivalent thing
Speaker 1: to do that you just said, which is like let
Speaker 1: me create my own Like I didn't join in all
Speaker 1: black space, and it wasn't like let me maybe in
Speaker 1: some really small way, I found a group of integrated
Speaker 1: people that like, like, that's their value.
Speaker 2: You were trying to recreate kind of what home had been.
Speaker 1: Like Yeah, but it was impossible to do. It was
Speaker 1: impossible to do in this situation.
Speaker 2: That's so fascinating because I didn't feel like I was
Speaker 2: consciously doing something in search of a black identity. But
Speaker 2: I have to say to you like, I get it.
Speaker 2: There weren't there wasn't home on campus. It was one
Speaker 2: or the other.
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking about how you and I communicated this
Speaker 1: even during that time, Like we did, yes talk about
Speaker 1: our experiences, we probably talked more about about some of
Speaker 1: these racial issues as they came up and over the
Speaker 1: summers where we hung out NonStop still because it was
Speaker 1: just part of our experience. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I was thinking about that because I think actually
Speaker 2: the strength of our relationship in college was less about
Speaker 2: what happened during the school year when we were away
Speaker 2: from each other, even with these occasional visits, and more
Speaker 2: about how we reconnected when we came home. And in
Speaker 2: that sense, I think our relationship deepened and strengthened because
Speaker 2: while we were changing in these other environments that monopolized
Speaker 2: most of our lives. You know, for those two months
Speaker 2: we were home, man, we were actually working. And that's
Speaker 2: when we came up with our favorite pastime, which was
Speaker 2: competitive support. Remember that metaphor for working out together.
Speaker 1: Or doing whatever we're doing, yeah, hanging out together, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So we would challenge ourselves within the context of like
Speaker 2: if we challenge ourselves by how much more weight we
Speaker 2: could lift today, or how many more basketball games we
Speaker 2: can play in one day? We'll be better at everything.
Speaker 2: And that was really that was a special time. I mean,
Speaker 2: our summers together in college were incredible.
Speaker 1: And this is a question about I mean, this is
Speaker 1: actually might be outside of race, but it's impossible not
Speaker 1: to consider it when you think about our dynamics. But
Speaker 1: this is just about how any two people solidify a
Speaker 1: friendship from childhood into adulthood, because I'm thinking about two
Speaker 1: moments between us, and one is when I was like
Speaker 1: in my early twenties, I traveled abroad, and when I
Speaker 1: came back, you were the one who picked me up
Speaker 1: at the airport and you were working in Chicago. You
Speaker 1: were dating someone I had been away for over a
Speaker 1: year yep. And I remember us having like, in that moment,
Speaker 1: a very like explicit conversation of how to like recalibrate
Speaker 1: our friendship in adult terms.
Speaker 2: I remember the feeling. I literally have an image of
Speaker 2: this day of you getting off the air poor.
Speaker 1: You had like this weird haircut, like a.
Speaker 2: Buzz stud, and I hadn't seen I hadn't seen you
Speaker 2: where with that look before. But I don't remember the conversation,
Speaker 2: so what do we say to each other.
Speaker 1: We need to get to know each other as adults.
Speaker 1: Whatever presumptions we have about each other, we have to
Speaker 1: sort of think about them. Anew, let's like, let's like
Speaker 1: not presume anything and think about also the ways that
Speaker 1: we've changed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I gets it.
Speaker 1: It was a really useful conversation to like move forward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get that.
Speaker 1: Here here's the other thing, Khalil that when we were
Speaker 1: in our twenties and I had gone to graduate school
Speaker 1: and I was thinking about my next thing, and I
Speaker 1: started teaching. You had been working as an accountant, and
Speaker 1: at that time you decided to become a historian, to
Speaker 1: enter a PhD program in history. And the question is, like,
Speaker 1: if you had remained an accountant, whether we would still
Speaker 1: be friends. That's a right question. It's like a joke
Speaker 1: in a way, but I'm also serious, Like our interests
Speaker 1: totally aligned, like our lifelong interest aligned. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think honestly, it's fair to say that had I
Speaker 2: stayed on that route, we may not have stayed as close.
Speaker 2: I think it would have been a closeness issue because
Speaker 2: the things we could talk about, the things we could share.
Speaker 2: I mean, and the truth is like it was your
Speaker 2: father who had been who was and it continues to
Speaker 2: be a historian at the University of Chicago as a
Speaker 2: retired professor. Like, he's one of the first people I
Speaker 2: talked about when I was about to make that move.
Speaker 2: And so even thinking about, like the life trajectory I
Speaker 2: was on ran through a relationship with your own father,
Speaker 2: which meant it ran through you.
Speaker 1: And then the shared interest, you know, not coincidentally, is
Speaker 1: about race and inequity and just these issues like these
Speaker 1: are the things that we've been talking about for the
Speaker 1: last thirty years, and we've shared that exploration and that
Speaker 1: path together. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the more I think about, if we
Speaker 2: could invent a new race, it would be you and
Speaker 2: me together. Hm hmm.
Speaker 1: Well that's weird. Let's let's let's let's take let's take
Speaker 1: a short break, and when we come back, let's think
Speaker 1: about the ways that these interracial relationships, these friendships, what
Speaker 1: do they even matter? Like what difference do they make?
Speaker 4: All?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Man, So we've mapped basically our whole friendship, you know,
Speaker 2: and here we are working together, we're making a freaking
Speaker 2: podcast together and talking about our past all the time,
Speaker 2: and so pretty clear that whatever.
Speaker 1: Map podcast about talking about our past.
Speaker 2: Yes, so it's pretty clear that whatever we've been up
Speaker 2: to for a long time works because after all, after all,
Speaker 2: like the whole point of our show, the point of
Speaker 2: interracial friendship is also like how do we reduce use
Speaker 2: racism and all the fucking damage and death in mayhem
Speaker 2: that comes with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now the stakes are incredibly high for this. I mean,
Speaker 1: it really matters that people do come in contact. So
Speaker 1: the first study that we cited that listed all the
Speaker 1: statistics about white people and black people having their own
Speaker 1: sort of exclusive social networks that they're not hanging out
Speaker 1: with people across race. They also in that study asked
Speaker 1: people questions, and they found that white people who didn't
Speaker 1: have black people or other people of other race in
Speaker 1: their social networks were less likely to think that the slavery,
Speaker 1: the legacy of slavery and discrimination still mattered that had
Speaker 1: an impact on society. They were less likely to think
Speaker 1: that a history of racism mattered. This is like defines
Speaker 1: our political moment our divide here in the country right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's actually a huge cost to the failure
Speaker 2: of people to experience a meaningful integrated relationship and ship,
Speaker 2: because at the end of the day, these folks that
Speaker 2: you just described, you know, white people who don't have
Speaker 2: integrated social networks, basically dismissed structural racism. And so you
Speaker 2: can't solve for structural racism if a majority of the
Speaker 2: white population doesn't even think it's real.
Speaker 1: Nom hmmm. So let's think about us and sort of
Speaker 1: as a model for this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So I like to put it this way.
Speaker 2: We know that segregation is rampant in American society and
Speaker 2: to some degree as bad or worse in some instances
Speaker 2: than it was in the nineteen fifties and sixties. And
Speaker 2: so integration is necessary but may not be entirely sufficient.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about what more we think might be required.
Speaker 2: And I think that's when the broader set of experiences
Speaker 2: that we had. So you could live in an integrated community,
Speaker 2: you could go to an integrated school, and yet if
Speaker 2: the parents and the social network that you're actually part
Speaker 2: of this integrated isn't fully invested in your relationship, right,
Speaker 2: then it's probably not going to be the strongest outcome.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we were talking about you know, both of
Speaker 1: our parents, our sets of parents were like embraced each
Speaker 1: other fully as their standing child. Everyone around us was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that friendship is meaningful. Yeah, our bosses, our coaches, our
Speaker 1: other friends.
Speaker 2: That's right, John, mister g shout out. The whole community
Speaker 2: to some degree supported you and me. And I'll just say,
Speaker 2: for the record, I don't have any other white friends
Speaker 2: from my high school years. All those people I talked
Speaker 2: about at the top of this show, like, I didn't
Speaker 2: have any relationships with their parents. I mean I went
Speaker 2: over their houses a few times to have to have
Speaker 2: a meal, you know, for one reason or another. But
Speaker 2: there was nothing that came anywhere close than my relationship
Speaker 2: with Ralph and Ernestein.
Speaker 1: There are some old Jewish people in Hyde Park who
Speaker 1: just like calling their lawyers. They're changing their will right now.
Speaker 1: You had been in it and now you're out.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about my high school friends, high school friends only.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: I have one final takeaway, and it's an important one
Speaker 2: because I teach about Kenneth Clark, the famous social psychologists
Speaker 2: who did the Doll studies in the nineteen forties that
Speaker 2: ultimately helped to inform the story that segregation was deeply
Speaker 2: harmful and led to the Brown versus Board of Education decision.
Speaker 1: So Kenneth Clark described, yeah, describe yeah a little bit.
Speaker 2: So it kind of encapsulates all that we've been talking about.
Speaker 2: So ten years later, in nineteen sixty five, Ish Kenneth
Speaker 2: Clark writes a book called Dark Ghettos. And in this
Speaker 2: book he's looking at the failure of integrated high schools
Speaker 2: in New York City. And so here's a guy famous
Speaker 2: for helping to desegregate Southern schools. But ten years later
Speaker 2: he's like, schools in New York City are so segregated
Speaker 2: they are also deeply harmful to not just black kids.
Speaker 2: And here's the biggest takeaway. He said, an integrated school,
Speaker 2: whether it was in New York or Birmingham, Alabama, was
Speaker 2: not just about increasing literacy at test scores and what
Speaker 2: kids learned. It was about building relationships. It was about
Speaker 2: a social contract. That is that democracy itself depended upon
Speaker 2: black and white people being together for long periods of time,
Speaker 2: getting to know each other, and working together to solve
Speaker 2: complicated problems, even if they were math problems in third grades.
Speaker 2: It was the fundamental building block for a democratic, just racial,
Speaker 2: egalitarian society.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the sense of that the schools an integrated
Speaker 1: school is so vital to have any of this going on.
Speaker 1: And what we know is that that doesn't even exist today,
Speaker 1: that seventy years after desegregation, we still have these structures
Speaker 1: that keep us apart. And basically, you know, if people
Speaker 1: are in proximity to one another, if they're in contact
Speaker 1: with one another, that's not going to that's not enough.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've talked about all the ways that we
Speaker 1: have more, but that is the start that people need.
Speaker 1: They need that start, they need that contact to begin something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and without it, the bottom line is you can't
Speaker 2: build on it. There's no foundation. It's all broken. And
Speaker 2: so this is where we begin.
Speaker 1: Folks.
Speaker 2: Next time you call us, who'll say, The next time
Speaker 2: there's a proposal to do something with our schools that
Speaker 2: open up access to them, you say, yes we can.
Speaker 2: The next time there's a new zoning proposal to the
Speaker 2: township officials to do affordable housing, you say, yes we can,
Speaker 2: because those are the fundamental structures that keep us apart
Speaker 2: and make it nearly impossible to see the kind of
Speaker 2: friendships that you and I have lived, loved and enjoyed
Speaker 2: all these years.
Speaker 1: Yes we can, Obama, I like that Khalil, You're loving
Speaker 1: on some Obama. I love you man, love you too.
Speaker 2: Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of
Speaker 2: Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me
Speaker 2: Khalil Dubron Mohammad and my best friend Ben Austin.
Speaker 1: This show is produced by Lucy Sullivan. It's edited by
Speaker 1: Sarah Nix with help from Keyshel Williams. Our engineer is
Speaker 1: Amanda Kwang and our managing producer is Constanza Gallardo.
Speaker 2: At Pushkin thanks to Leitol Molad, Julia Barton, Heather Fain,
Speaker 2: Carly Migliori, John Schnarz, Greta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 1: Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan the
Speaker 1: brilliant Avery R. Young from his album Tubman. You definitely
Speaker 1: want to check out his music at his website Averyaryong
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 2: You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin
Speaker 2: pods and you can sign up for our newsletter at
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Speaker 1: And if you like our show, please give us a
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Speaker 4: Ebony and Ivory, Perfect Harmony and Perfect Time Money side
Speaker 4: by side on my piano keyboard.
Speaker 1: Why don't you love Me,