April 26, 2023 • 37 mins
Friendships like Ben and Khalil's are rare in America, according to the numbers. In this episode, they talk about the social science on interracial friendships, and about the particular conditions that made their friendship possible. Plus, why these friendships are important in bridging our deeply divided country.
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushing. You know, I did have one white friend who
I won't name, and his parents conveyed to me that
I was a bad influence on him. Really, I don't
think if it would do with race, It just had
to do with me, big asshole. Oh that's funny.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I'm Khalil Jibron Muhammad.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I'm Ben Austen. We're two best friends, one black, one white.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is
some of my best friends are.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Some of my best friends are dot dot dot. In
this show, we wrestled with the challenges and the absurdities
of a deeply divided and unequal country.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
And today we are finally talking about us. The interracial
friendship the show is based on.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
That's right. We're going to tell you how you too
can have a successful interracial friendship. Three quick ways to
do it, guarantee.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
And make your life happier.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Just kidding, but we are going to talk about interracial friendships.
We're going to talk about the social science behind them,
what the social science gets right, what it gets wrong,
and why these friendships are important.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
So I've been thinking a lot about our friendship. Man,
Remember that time that makes me happy?
Speaker 1 (01:46):
To hear.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Remember that time we were on the like this big
public radio talk show promoting some of the Best Friends Are.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Of course, that was one of our first promos that
we were on a show, and we were talking about
basically the conceit of our show, which is, you know,
one of us is black, one of us is white, right,
and that our friendship didn't necessarily mean a lot as
far as changing structural issues, but we're here to talk
about to talk about what we are trying to do,
(02:15):
that's right.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
So here we start taking all these calls. It's a
call in show, and people are like, well, I'm so
happy to talk to you Ben and Khalil, because you know,
my daughter's sixteen and she's white and she just offended
this black girl at our school and she has no
idea what to do. Can you help us figure this out?
Speaker 1 (02:32):
And it was caller after call her. So the next
caller was a black woman who was like, this woman
at work is trying to be my friend, and I'm
not sure if I like her. We became the interracial
buddy whisperers, that's right. It was sort of the opposite
of what we were hoping to do, but we leaned
into it. You know, we were like, we weren't going
to tell people we were going to do this, and
(02:53):
that's right. In a way, maybe we were like, hey,
this is this is much more professionally lucrative, like guess
is what we should be.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Doing, or just you know, maybe much more helpful. So
it got us to thinking about how rare these friendships are.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
That's right, that's right, And what does.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
The actual research on the frequency and significance of interracial
friendships actually tell us?
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yeah, yeah, so you're right. So let's look at some research,
some social science, and maybe we're going to learn something
about about interracial friendships, but maybe we'll also learn something
about ourselves and what makes us friends. I like that
it's a win win, or maybe what we discover is
like we shouldn't be friends. So we looked at this
(03:44):
study conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and they
did surveys of American friendship friendship networks in twenty twenty two.
And what we found is there's a ton of other
research it also supports their findings, including from Pew, and
what they found is white Americans their friendship networks are
(04:05):
on average ninety percent white so of all their friends,
nine out of ten of them are white. Yes, and
more than that, sixty seven percent their friendship networks are
like one hundred percent white. Are all white? No friends
who are outside their race, That's right.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
If you go to their Facebook pages, there is not
a single black or brown face anywhere to be found. Now,
turns out for black folks they are a little bit
more engaging.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Outside of the race.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
The study said that Black American friendship networks were around
seventy eight percent black, so not quite as bad as
white folks, but surprisingly not as good as it is
for Latinos and Asians.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Some people would think that Latinos and Asians would be
even more exclusive, but it's actually the opposite. They have
more friends, even more friends who are outside their social circles,
who are of different races.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, and some researchers speculate it's the smallness of at
least for the Asian population that they kind of can't
help but have people outside of their community, even their
size in the population. All right, So big summary for
this research. Essentially, compared to people of color, white people
have the smallest percentage of friends who are not white,
and even more interesting than that like, the more education
(05:18):
white people get doesn't change this. It's still the same problem.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Come on, white people, come on, white people, Come on,
my people, Come on, my people. We need to work on.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
This, so listen. In nineteen fifty four, this researcher named
Gordon Allport wrote this book.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Called The Nature. You're using the way back machine. We're
going all the way back to nineteen fifty I'm a historian.
Don't I get to it? I interrupted you, but keep
on going, all right, all right.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
So this is important because this is kind of like
where this whole set of ideas came from.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
And it's called what's the name of the study?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Again, I'm say the name of the study is called
The Nature of Prejudice. And Gordon Allport is famous now
for establishing what's called contact theory. And basically it's really simple.
He argued the different racists spending time together in pursuit
of a common goal would reduce prejudice. Okay, And he
actually was doing this research at a time when the
(06:12):
military had just been desegregated in nineteen forty eight, a
little bit after World War Two, and some of our
listeners who recognized nineteen fifty four was a pivotal year
for Brown versus Board of Education what schools were desegregated.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
So this was so this is really thinking about about
right at the start of integrated America and how to
do it out of it segregated America.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, because the segregation was essentially supposedly on life support.
And so Allport was a social psychologist and he figured, hey,
we psychologists should be able to help solve for how
white people in particular get comfortable with getting to know
black people and opening up society. So he theorized that
(06:55):
in order for prejudice to be reduced, in order for
interracial friendships to thrive, like hours, four conditions would need
to be met. And I'm just going to simplify things.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yeah, So like.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
There's equality, cooperation, and clear rules. So does this make sense?
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yes, equality, commonality, cooperation, and clear rules. Maybe maybe a
way to understand it is that apply it to our friendship.
You have this, we have this lifelong friendship. That's right.
We've been friends since freshman year of high school yep,
and here we are, you know, thirty some years later.
And I think in terms of commonality, let's start there
(07:38):
that you and I surprisingly only had one class in
high school together, but we're in the same school and
we actually meet at a workplace. We work at Hyde
Park Computers together in ninth grade. We start a job together.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, our real origin story is I'm fourteen years old
working in a computer store as a freshman in high
school and at some point I break my thumb and
I need help.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
And here you get hired, You get high, get hired
to do the most rude, mentary work, and you're my boss,
you're my superior. And yeah, I mean we didn't instantly
become friends, but we sort of at least like in
this idea, we're in the same space, we're hanging out.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah, let's pause on that for a minute, because this
whole thing about commonality and equality is really about like
people meeting us peers where there isn't hierarchy because you know,
the old, the old historical problem is that you know,
black people were slaves to white people, and so it
wasn't about like proximity or simple contact if it was
a very hierarchical relationship. So we are in this workplace
(08:41):
experience together, which is really when we start to become friends.
And then that was like September October I remember our
freshman year. By spring we're both playing tennis together on
the tennis.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
S that's right. And then on the tennis team, you know,
I mean, I'm kind of the tennis prodigy star.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Oh is that right? Don't forget I have most improved
player two years in a row. I got a matter
of time.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I will never let you forget that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
So it is the context. It's the classic content where
black and white people come together, you know, break down
their prejudices in pursuit of a common goal and become friends. Right,
that's the way it's supposed to work.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
We're still equals. We're still equals in the sense of
we're operating the same sphere and under the same rules
in a.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Way, Yeah, because if you think about it, in the
moment that Allport was doing this work, like the military,
was this space where people came together as equals for
the common purpose of defending the nation with a shared
values of patriotism and clear rules of like how do
you work together? And so whether it's a sports team
for a lot of black and white Americans over the
(09:49):
years and certainly today, or whether it's a school environment
or even a workplace, it's this idea that if people
are in a common space, generally in a flat environment
where everyone has kind of equality, then good things will happen.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
That's the idea. Yeah, so we have to we're going
from contact, which is different from a friendship that lasts
a lifetime, essentially, Like, how does that happen? That's right?
And all right? So I'd say one is, we come
from this community. We're allowed for just this contact to happen, right,
I mean that seems pretty rare.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Well, let's just unpack that, a man, we come from
a straight up integrated neighborhood. Like there's probably like three
of them, you know, in the state of Illinois, and
maybe fifty around the country. And I'm obviously joking a
bit here, but it's unusual that in and of itself
is a bit unusual.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah, and maybe I mean, even thinking about that a
little bit, so that neither of us was the only
in the other circle. That's right.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I think, if my memory serves me correctly, I have
more white friends, meaning people I had called friend and
hung out friends and hung out with, than you had
white friends.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
That's possible. In fact, I thought at some point that
I didn't want to be friends with you because you
were two, you had too many white friends. I was worried,
but then you know you you pass the test eventually. Okay.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
So look, these four conditions at all port set up
defined an entire field of how do you reduce prejudice
by making friends or making contact with somebody else? Okay,
But it turns out that most people didn't have this experience.
The data we just looked at in twenty twenty two
shows us just how badly this hole turned out over
(11:36):
these last several decades.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
So we know that now that that that these groups
are really exclusive, that people white people, but even of
other races aren't hanging out together. Yep. And so since
the nineteen fifties, segregation is outlawed in the United States,
and yet people still aren't coming together. And so when
we think about the spaces historically or even over these
(12:00):
last sixty seventy years where people have different race are
coming together, So where are they? They might be in schools, right, yep, yep,
that's right, they might be in the military.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
That's right. Probably one of the biggest areas that people
often celebrate as places where prejudice and segregation broke down.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
In fact, once we were at a baseball game in Denver,
you and me, and because we're together, everyone around us
was saying, you guys must have been in the military together, right,
because they had never seen like black and white friends together.
That's right. You know, sports becomes this kind of like,
you know, almost like a metaphor for bringing people together
under these you know, equal areas where people with different
experiences could bond.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
And I guess William Hollywood Movies telling this story.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yes, in a workplace, right, so places that are beyond
your own private sphere, which are somehow public, yep.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
And so for you and me, like that's kind of
our story, right. We come of age in the nineteen eighties,
meeting in our integrated high school.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
And you know, so we're in this integrated space of
all these ways, and a lot of people even from
our high school and shared our experiences, didn't become lifelong
friends with people of different races, just by the statistics
we're even cited.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Which creates this really, this a conundrum, right because to
some degree, you know, we are a product of a
moment of integration in America. We grew up in an
integrated neighborhood, We go to an integrated high school. We
have these integrated experiences, and it's like it turns out
we are like rare creatures relative to the vast majority
(13:39):
of white or black people.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
But I also don't think I don't think there are
any conversations like, you know, you should have even on
the other sense, oh you should have you know, friends
across racial boundaries, you should have more friends. I don't
think it was just talked about did you have conversations
like that of like the meaning of this not at all.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
I mean, at best, I would say we really were
kind of in an integrated neighborhood on the South side
Chicago and High Park. It was largely middle class, which
mitigated against the ways in which low income people often
are doubly burdened and stigmatized, and in a way that
like some people might be remembering their black friends from
their suburban high school or something like, you know, I
(14:22):
wasn't busted in to go to.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
School with you, right, and the community.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah, you didn't come from some like white part of
town to go to this integrated high school. You lived
in a black neighborhood. So there were some unique things
about being in an integrated community. And I got to say,
like I adopted your parents very early on. I called
your parents Ma and Paul, Like, I can't remember a
time when I haven't called them that. Now you called
my mom.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
What shorty rough? She was a stand in mom, And
so that sense too of our larger family circle sort
of you know that this is being normalized and part
of our experiences that And then I guess i'd say, like,
you know, it wasn't like my parents were the only
white and Jewish adults you knew, and for me it
(15:08):
was and like your mom was the only black woman
I knew. That's right because student for those figures, because.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
You had a soon to be black mother in law Carol's.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
House, That's right, I was. Yeah, So this is the
other thing about in you know, as we're dating across
racial lines, do you think we ever talked about that
of like what that meant beyond you know, the either
the intrigue or the dangers or the significance. Did we
I don't remember ever having a conversation specifically about like
(15:39):
about about race and dating.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yeah, that's a good point. I mean I don't remember
like in our mutual friendship groups, there was definitely we
weren't the only ones. But I have to say, like
I mean, counterintuitive probably to other people, it was because
of your black girlfriend now wife, Danielle, that I had
two of my high school sweethearts. I mean, like it was.
It was a win win for me. No matter how
(16:01):
we look at.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
It, you might have not dated any black girls if
it wasn't for me dating a black girl. Is what
you're saying.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
No, that is not That is not what I'm saying.
But befive, listen, We're going to talk more about this
as we go from being boys to men and grow
up and really unpack interracial friendships and look at a
little bit more research to see how it helps us
explain what's been going on in this country.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
We'll be right back after the break.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
All right, we are back on some of my best
friends are and Khalil and I are talking about interracial friendships.
This is a meta episode in a way. And Khalil,
we've been thinking about how how studies, how research explains
even our friendship. And so you had just said right
before the break, it's one thing to be friends as kids,
(16:59):
but but what does it mean to be friends as adults.
That's a whole other. A whole other issue and what
does it.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Mean you just have a friendship that lasts, right. A
lot of people were like, oh, yeah, you know one
of my best friends was filling the blank when I
was in high school. What I haven't talked to this
person in twenty years.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah. So there's this book from twenty nineteen and it's
written by several sociologists. It's called In the Company We Keep,
and it's exactly about this subject. It's about interracial friendships
and about this transition from childhood to adulthood. The authors
looked at and analyzed Americans who were kids in seventh
(17:35):
to twelfth grade in the nineteen nineties, essentially us right
at this time when multiculturalism is being celebrated as like
the American ideal. Yes, yes, And then they grow up
and the researchers study them again in two thousand and
eight when they're between they're about thirty years old. So
we're in the Obama era, the so called post racial America.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
This wholehold we go from color blindness to post racialism
with this, with these two cohorts of young people.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
And a lot of people fifteen thousand people to sort
of think of that they were friends as teenagers what
happened as adults?
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Right, These are fifteen thousand respondents. This is the basis
of the study, and here's what they found. I mean,
the simple story they found is that kids who attend
more diverse schools like the one we went to were
more likely to have what they call cross racial friendships
as adults, even if they didn't have them as kids,
meaning as younger kids. That's pretty big deal and helps
(18:30):
to lay the foundation for you know how. The research
tells us what are the necessary conditions for interracial friendships
to thrive.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So underlining that again, going to an interracial school is
a huge deal. This is defining in terms of having
cross racial friendships.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yes, but it turns out that even that reality and
knowing that reality, going back to the nineteen fifties, at
the end of legal segregation in the Brown Versus Board
of Education decision, the line separating black and white people
in the United States is still stronger than any other
racial groups, meaning black and white people are still not together,
(19:11):
which probably is as much a story about the failure
of integration and housing in so many other spaces than
anything else.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
So meaning they may not have gone to interracial schools exactly,
and even if they had, they still it didn't last
over time.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Or that they went to schools, but people were being
bussed and shuttled about and it wasn't actually extending in
the classroom.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Yeah. Yeah. So in this same study, they also looked
at interracial romantic relationships, so not just friendships but friends
with benefits and got it, and they found the same thing.
They found that you were much more likely to have
across racial romantic relationship if you went to a diverse school,
(19:56):
and they also found that you were more likely to
get with somebody of a different race if you had
a friend of a different race. That's me. That's the
wingman theory of interracial day. If you want to date
across racial lines, you need a wingman who's of the
race you want to date. That's what it explains that.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
So what you're saying is it's only because of me
that you have this beautiful black woman as your wife
that you've had for how long have you all been married?
I've lost track.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Now, yeah, a little bit, a little bit, But you
might be right, you might be right, But these researchers
are actually finding that if you actually have a more
authentic relationship with another culture. It's more likely that this
is a kind of real relationship. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
So, like essentially the hot that person's exotic to me
kind of flash in the pan love interest is not
what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Well, I want to talk about when we grow up
a little bit. So let's talk about college. Because to
be honest with you, Ben, I mean, all that we've
been talking about about our origin story, that's just four
years of our relationship. We're going on like thirty seven.
So and we you know, we didn't spend time together
really after high school for long time. We both go
our separate ways.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, And the truth is, like, so if we were
in an interracial space as teenagers, we both go to
predominantly white colleges.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
We both pronominantly white, overwhelmingly white.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Overwhelmingly white. Yes, we go into these spaces and separately.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yes, yes, right, So you're at the University of Rochester.
I go to the University of Pennsylvania. And I have
to tell you, man, I went to pen like I
didn't know shit about structural racism. I mean, I know
it's counterintuitive. Some people might think about my identity and
all of that, and what I do today, but kind
of the specialness of my childhood did not prepare me
(21:47):
for what I encountered when I became five percent of
pens black population in nineteen eighty nine, when I became
a freshman and.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
You had a white roommate. Freshman year, I remember, I had.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
A white room mate, Peter.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Like he was.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
He was taller than you, and I went from like,
you know, tall tall buddy to even taller buddy. Peter
and I got along swimmingly, but we did not become
friends right we defined.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
I remember search. I remember visiting you on campus and
staying in his bed and it was kind of funky. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Well, he wore the same blue jees literally all year long.
I just honestly, by the end of the year they
were standing up in the corner. But outside of Peter
as my freshman year roommate. Out of four years at Penn,
I literally met and kept as a close friend, one
white guy.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
I mean, I just want to say, they're like, they're
like twenty five white guys who are listening to this now,
and They're like, damn, I thought I thought we were
still friends.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I thought, No, let me, I mean this sincerely, like
if I had mostly white friends in high school, it
was just the opposite. In college, my whole world became
you know, African American this and that. I had tons
of black friends. I joined a fraternity, to a black, traditional,
(23:02):
historically black fraternity my freshman year, and I mean, it
just it made my life wonderful. I mean, and there's
no critique whatsoever. But it could not have been more
different than what I'd experienced growing.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Up, which is so interesting. So in this overwhelmingly white space,
you create your own overwhelmingly black bubble within it.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Well, I mean black people do that anyway, but you know, yeah,
most of the world, when you're in segregated Black America
or segregated white America, Yeah, black people figure out how
to make sense of their smallness of population relative to
white people in all the powerful ways white people exist
among us.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Yeah. So I'm thinking what you said, and again how
much I thought about structural racism before these dynamics. We
just took so much for granted, it was weird going
to a school that was overwhelmingly white. It was weird
for me. And I'm thinking back to even teen years
in youth, like one of my experiences or partly what
(24:03):
defined my experience of being the only one in a
lot of spaces.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Oh, you mean being the only one guy among people.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Which is which is a kind of valuable perspective to
get to think about race, you know, to think about
like what what most minorities experience all the time. It's
just like and then to know like, oh, my whiteness
is a thing rather than a neutral thing or it
doesn't exist. You know that that whiteness is also race,
because I'm being seen from my race right now. And
(24:33):
to enter in a space where that that calculus never
came up, it was disorienting. There wasn't the equivalent thing
to do that you just said, which is like let
me create my own Like I didn't join in all
black space, and it wasn't like let me maybe in
some really small way, I found a group of integrated
people that like, like, that's their value.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
You were trying to recreate kind of what home had been.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Like Yeah, but it was impossible to do. It was
impossible to do in this situation.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
That's so fascinating because I didn't feel like I was
consciously doing something in search of a black identity. But
I have to say to you like, I get it.
There weren't there wasn't home on campus. It was one
or the other.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
So I'm thinking about how you and I communicated this
even during that time, Like we did, yes talk about
our experiences, we probably talked more about about some of
these racial issues as they came up and over the
summers where we hung out NonStop still because it was
just part of our experience. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Well, I was thinking about that because I think actually
the strength of our relationship in college was less about
what happened during the school year when we were away
from each other, even with these occasional visits, and more
about how we reconnected when we came home. And in
that sense, I think our relationship deepened and strengthened because
while we were changing in these other environments that monopolized
most of our lives. You know, for those two months
(25:58):
we were home, man, we were actually working. And that's
when we came up with our favorite pastime, which was
competitive support. Remember that metaphor for working out together.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Or doing whatever we're doing, yeah, hanging out together, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
So we would challenge ourselves within the context of like
if we challenge ourselves by how much more weight we
could lift today, or how many more basketball games we
can play in one day? We'll be better at everything.
And that was really that was a special time. I mean,
our summers together in college were incredible.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
And this is a question about I mean, this is
actually might be outside of race, but it's impossible not
to consider it when you think about our dynamics. But
this is just about how any two people solidify a
friendship from childhood into adulthood, because I'm thinking about two
moments between us, and one is when I was like
in my early twenties, I traveled abroad, and when I
(26:48):
came back, you were the one who picked me up
at the airport and you were working in Chicago. You
were dating someone I had been away for over a
year yep. And I remember us having like, in that moment,
a very like explicit conversation of how to like recalibrate
our friendship in adult terms.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
I remember the feeling. I literally have an image of
this day of you getting off the air poor.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
You had like this weird haircut, like a.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Buzz stud, and I hadn't seen I hadn't seen you
where with that look before. But I don't remember the conversation,
so what do we say to each other.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
We need to get to know each other as adults.
Whatever presumptions we have about each other, we have to
sort of think about them. Anew, let's like, let's like
not presume anything and think about also the ways that
we've changed.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Yeah, and I gets it.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
It was a really useful conversation to like move forward.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Yeah, I get that.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Here here's the other thing, Khalil that when we were
in our twenties and I had gone to graduate school
and I was thinking about my next thing, and I
started teaching. You had been working as an accountant, and
at that time you decided to become a historian, to
enter a PhD program in history. And the question is, like,
(27:58):
if you had remained an accountant, whether we would still
be friends. That's a right question. It's like a joke
in a way, but I'm also serious, Like our interests
totally aligned, like our lifelong interest aligned. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
I think honestly, it's fair to say that had I
stayed on that route, we may not have stayed as close.
I think it would have been a closeness issue because
the things we could talk about, the things we could share.
I mean, and the truth is like it was your
father who had been who was and it continues to
be a historian at the University of Chicago as a
(28:33):
retired professor. Like, he's one of the first people I
talked about when I was about to make that move.
And so even thinking about, like the life trajectory I
was on ran through a relationship with your own father,
which meant it ran through you.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
And then the shared interest, you know, not coincidentally, is
about race and inequity and just these issues like these
are the things that we've been talking about for the
last thirty years, and we've shared that exploration and that
path together. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, I mean, the more I think about, if we
could invent a new race, it would be you and
me together. Hm hmm.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Well that's weird. Let's let's let's let's take let's take
a short break, and when we come back, let's think
about the ways that these interracial relationships, these friendships, what
do they even matter? Like what difference do they make?
Speaker 4 (29:41):
All?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Right?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Man, So we've mapped basically our whole friendship, you know,
and here we are working together, we're making a freaking
podcast together and talking about our past all the time,
and so pretty clear that whatever.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Map podcast about talking about our past.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Yes, so it's pretty clear that whatever we've been up
to for a long time works because after all, after all,
like the whole point of our show, the point of
interracial friendship is also like how do we reduce use
racism and all the fucking damage and death in mayhem
that comes with it.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Yeah, now the stakes are incredibly high for this. I mean,
it really matters that people do come in contact. So
the first study that we cited that listed all the
statistics about white people and black people having their own
sort of exclusive social networks that they're not hanging out
with people across race. They also in that study asked
(30:34):
people questions, and they found that white people who didn't
have black people or other people of other race in
their social networks were less likely to think that the slavery,
the legacy of slavery and discrimination still mattered that had
an impact on society. They were less likely to think
that a history of racism mattered. This is like defines
(30:56):
our political moment our divide here in the country right now.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah, so there's actually a huge cost to the failure
of people to experience a meaningful integrated relationship and ship,
because at the end of the day, these folks that
you just described, you know, white people who don't have
integrated social networks, basically dismissed structural racism. And so you
can't solve for structural racism if a majority of the
(31:23):
white population doesn't even think it's real.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Nom hmmm. So let's think about us and sort of
as a model for this.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Yeah. Yeah, So I like to put it this way.
We know that segregation is rampant in American society and
to some degree as bad or worse in some instances
than it was in the nineteen fifties and sixties. And
so integration is necessary but may not be entirely sufficient.
So let's talk about what more we think might be required.
(31:56):
And I think that's when the broader set of experiences
that we had. So you could live in an integrated community,
you could go to an integrated school, and yet if
the parents and the social network that you're actually part
of this integrated isn't fully invested in your relationship, right,
then it's probably not going to be the strongest outcome.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Yeah. So we were talking about you know, both of
our parents, our sets of parents were like embraced each
other fully as their standing child. Everyone around us was like, yeah,
that friendship is meaningful. Yeah, our bosses, our coaches, our
other friends.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
That's right, John, mister g shout out. The whole community
to some degree supported you and me. And I'll just say,
for the record, I don't have any other white friends
from my high school years. All those people I talked
about at the top of this show, like, I didn't
have any relationships with their parents. I mean I went
over their houses a few times to have to have
a meal, you know, for one reason or another. But
(32:56):
there was nothing that came anywhere close than my relationship
with Ralph and Ernestein.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
There are some old Jewish people in Hyde Park who
just like calling their lawyers. They're changing their will right now.
You had been in it and now you're out.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
I'm talking about my high school friends, high school friends only.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Well.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
I have one final takeaway, and it's an important one
because I teach about Kenneth Clark, the famous social psychologists
who did the Doll studies in the nineteen forties that
ultimately helped to inform the story that segregation was deeply
harmful and led to the Brown versus Board of Education decision.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
So Kenneth Clark described, yeah, describe yeah a little bit.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
So it kind of encapsulates all that we've been talking about.
So ten years later, in nineteen sixty five, Ish Kenneth
Clark writes a book called Dark Ghettos. And in this
book he's looking at the failure of integrated high schools
in New York City. And so here's a guy famous
for helping to desegregate Southern schools. But ten years later
he's like, schools in New York City are so segregated
(34:00):
they are also deeply harmful to not just black kids.
And here's the biggest takeaway. He said, an integrated school,
whether it was in New York or Birmingham, Alabama, was
not just about increasing literacy at test scores and what
kids learned. It was about building relationships. It was about
a social contract. That is that democracy itself depended upon
(34:24):
black and white people being together for long periods of time,
getting to know each other, and working together to solve
complicated problems, even if they were math problems in third grades.
It was the fundamental building block for a democratic, just racial,
egalitarian society.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yeah. Yeah, the sense of that the schools an integrated
school is so vital to have any of this going on.
And what we know is that that doesn't even exist today,
that seventy years after desegregation, we still have these structures
that keep us apart. And basically, you know, if people
(35:03):
are in proximity to one another, if they're in contact
with one another, that's not going to that's not enough.
I mean, we've talked about all the ways that we
have more, but that is the start that people need.
They need that start, they need that contact to begin something.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Yeah, and without it, the bottom line is you can't
build on it. There's no foundation. It's all broken. And
so this is where we begin.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Folks.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Next time you call us, who'll say, The next time
there's a proposal to do something with our schools that
open up access to them, you say, yes we can.
The next time there's a new zoning proposal to the
township officials to do affordable housing, you say, yes we can,
because those are the fundamental structures that keep us apart
and make it nearly impossible to see the kind of
(35:48):
friendships that you and I have lived, loved and enjoyed
all these years.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yes we can, Obama, I like that Khalil, You're loving
on some Obama. I love you man, love you too.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of
Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me
Khalil Dubron Mohammad and my best friend Ben Austin.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
This show is produced by Lucy Sullivan. It's edited by
Sarah Nix with help from Keyshel Williams. Our engineer is
Amanda Kwang and our managing producer is Constanza Gallardo.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
At Pushkin thanks to Leitol Molad, Julia Barton, Heather Fain,
Carly Migliori, John Schnarz, Greta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan the
brilliant Avery R. Young from his album Tubman. You definitely
want to check out his music at his website Averyaryong
dot com.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin
pods and you can sign up for our newsletter at
pushkin dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
And if you like our show, please give us a
five star rating and a review and listen even if
you don't like it, give it a five star rating
and a review, and please tell all of your best
friends about it. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Ebony and Ivory, Perfect Harmony and Perfect Time Money side
by side on my piano keyboard.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Why don't you love Me,
Pushing. You know, I did have one white friend who
I won't name, and his parents conveyed to me that
I was a bad influence on him. Really, I don't
think if it would do with race, It just had
to do with me, big asshole. Oh that's funny.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I'm Khalil Jibron Muhammad.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I'm Ben Austen. We're two best friends, one black, one white.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is
some of my best friends are.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Some of my best friends are dot dot dot. In
this show, we wrestled with the challenges and the absurdities
of a deeply divided and unequal country.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
And today we are finally talking about us. The interracial
friendship the show is based on.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
That's right. We're going to tell you how you too
can have a successful interracial friendship. Three quick ways to
do it, guarantee.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
And make your life happier.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Just kidding, but we are going to talk about interracial friendships.
We're going to talk about the social science behind them,
what the social science gets right, what it gets wrong,
and why these friendships are important.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
So I've been thinking a lot about our friendship. Man,
Remember that time that makes me happy?
Speaker 1 (01:46):
To hear.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Remember that time we were on the like this big
public radio talk show promoting some of the Best Friends Are.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Of course, that was one of our first promos that
we were on a show, and we were talking about
basically the conceit of our show, which is, you know,
one of us is black, one of us is white, right,
and that our friendship didn't necessarily mean a lot as
far as changing structural issues, but we're here to talk
about to talk about what we are trying to do,
(02:15):
that's right.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
So here we start taking all these calls. It's a
call in show, and people are like, well, I'm so
happy to talk to you Ben and Khalil, because you know,
my daughter's sixteen and she's white and she just offended
this black girl at our school and she has no
idea what to do. Can you help us figure this out?
Speaker 1 (02:32):
And it was caller after call her. So the next
caller was a black woman who was like, this woman
at work is trying to be my friend, and I'm
not sure if I like her. We became the interracial
buddy whisperers, that's right. It was sort of the opposite
of what we were hoping to do, but we leaned
into it. You know, we were like, we weren't going
to tell people we were going to do this, and
(02:53):
that's right. In a way, maybe we were like, hey,
this is this is much more professionally lucrative, like guess
is what we should be.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Doing, or just you know, maybe much more helpful. So
it got us to thinking about how rare these friendships are.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
That's right, that's right, And what does.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
The actual research on the frequency and significance of interracial
friendships actually tell us?
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yeah, yeah, so you're right. So let's look at some research,
some social science, and maybe we're going to learn something
about about interracial friendships, but maybe we'll also learn something
about ourselves and what makes us friends. I like that
it's a win win, or maybe what we discover is
like we shouldn't be friends. So we looked at this
(03:44):
study conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and they
did surveys of American friendship friendship networks in twenty twenty two.
And what we found is there's a ton of other
research it also supports their findings, including from Pew, and
what they found is white Americans their friendship networks are
(04:05):
on average ninety percent white so of all their friends,
nine out of ten of them are white. Yes, and
more than that, sixty seven percent their friendship networks are
like one hundred percent white. Are all white? No friends
who are outside their race, That's right.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
If you go to their Facebook pages, there is not
a single black or brown face anywhere to be found. Now,
turns out for black folks they are a little bit
more engaging.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Outside of the race.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
The study said that Black American friendship networks were around
seventy eight percent black, so not quite as bad as
white folks, but surprisingly not as good as it is
for Latinos and Asians.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Some people would think that Latinos and Asians would be
even more exclusive, but it's actually the opposite. They have
more friends, even more friends who are outside their social circles,
who are of different races.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, and some researchers speculate it's the smallness of at
least for the Asian population that they kind of can't
help but have people outside of their community, even their
size in the population. All right, So big summary for
this research. Essentially, compared to people of color, white people
have the smallest percentage of friends who are not white,
and even more interesting than that like, the more education
(05:18):
white people get doesn't change this. It's still the same problem.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Come on, white people, come on, white people, Come on,
my people, Come on, my people. We need to work on.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
This, so listen. In nineteen fifty four, this researcher named
Gordon Allport wrote this book.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Called The Nature. You're using the way back machine. We're
going all the way back to nineteen fifty I'm a historian.
Don't I get to it? I interrupted you, but keep
on going, all right, all right.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
So this is important because this is kind of like
where this whole set of ideas came from.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
And it's called what's the name of the study?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Again, I'm say the name of the study is called
The Nature of Prejudice. And Gordon Allport is famous now
for establishing what's called contact theory. And basically it's really simple.
He argued the different racists spending time together in pursuit
of a common goal would reduce prejudice. Okay, And he
actually was doing this research at a time when the
(06:12):
military had just been desegregated in nineteen forty eight, a
little bit after World War Two, and some of our
listeners who recognized nineteen fifty four was a pivotal year
for Brown versus Board of Education what schools were desegregated.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
So this was so this is really thinking about about
right at the start of integrated America and how to
do it out of it segregated America.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, because the segregation was essentially supposedly on life support.
And so Allport was a social psychologist and he figured, hey,
we psychologists should be able to help solve for how
white people in particular get comfortable with getting to know
black people and opening up society. So he theorized that
(06:55):
in order for prejudice to be reduced, in order for
interracial friendships to thrive, like hours, four conditions would need
to be met. And I'm just going to simplify things.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yeah, So like.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
There's equality, cooperation, and clear rules. So does this make sense?
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yes, equality, commonality, cooperation, and clear rules. Maybe maybe a
way to understand it is that apply it to our friendship.
You have this, we have this lifelong friendship. That's right.
We've been friends since freshman year of high school yep,
and here we are, you know, thirty some years later.
And I think in terms of commonality, let's start there
(07:38):
that you and I surprisingly only had one class in
high school together, but we're in the same school and
we actually meet at a workplace. We work at Hyde
Park Computers together in ninth grade. We start a job together.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, our real origin story is I'm fourteen years old
working in a computer store as a freshman in high
school and at some point I break my thumb and
I need help.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
And here you get hired, You get high, get hired
to do the most rude, mentary work, and you're my boss,
you're my superior. And yeah, I mean we didn't instantly
become friends, but we sort of at least like in
this idea, we're in the same space, we're hanging out.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah, let's pause on that for a minute, because this
whole thing about commonality and equality is really about like
people meeting us peers where there isn't hierarchy because you know,
the old, the old historical problem is that you know,
black people were slaves to white people, and so it
wasn't about like proximity or simple contact if it was
a very hierarchical relationship. So we are in this workplace
(08:41):
experience together, which is really when we start to become friends.
And then that was like September October I remember our
freshman year. By spring we're both playing tennis together on
the tennis.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
S that's right. And then on the tennis team, you know,
I mean, I'm kind of the tennis prodigy star.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Oh is that right? Don't forget I have most improved
player two years in a row. I got a matter
of time.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I will never let you forget that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
So it is the context. It's the classic content where
black and white people come together, you know, break down
their prejudices in pursuit of a common goal and become friends. Right,
that's the way it's supposed to work.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
We're still equals. We're still equals in the sense of
we're operating the same sphere and under the same rules
in a.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Way, Yeah, because if you think about it, in the
moment that Allport was doing this work, like the military,
was this space where people came together as equals for
the common purpose of defending the nation with a shared
values of patriotism and clear rules of like how do
you work together? And so whether it's a sports team
for a lot of black and white Americans over the
(09:49):
years and certainly today, or whether it's a school environment
or even a workplace, it's this idea that if people
are in a common space, generally in a flat environment
where everyone has kind of equality, then good things will happen.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
That's the idea. Yeah, so we have to we're going
from contact, which is different from a friendship that lasts
a lifetime, essentially, Like, how does that happen? That's right?
And all right? So I'd say one is, we come
from this community. We're allowed for just this contact to happen, right,
I mean that seems pretty rare.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Well, let's just unpack that, a man, we come from
a straight up integrated neighborhood. Like there's probably like three
of them, you know, in the state of Illinois, and
maybe fifty around the country. And I'm obviously joking a
bit here, but it's unusual that in and of itself
is a bit unusual.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah, and maybe I mean, even thinking about that a
little bit, so that neither of us was the only
in the other circle. That's right.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I think, if my memory serves me correctly, I have
more white friends, meaning people I had called friend and
hung out friends and hung out with, than you had
white friends.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
That's possible. In fact, I thought at some point that
I didn't want to be friends with you because you
were two, you had too many white friends. I was worried,
but then you know you you pass the test eventually. Okay.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
So look, these four conditions at all port set up
defined an entire field of how do you reduce prejudice
by making friends or making contact with somebody else? Okay,
But it turns out that most people didn't have this experience.
The data we just looked at in twenty twenty two
shows us just how badly this hole turned out over
(11:36):
these last several decades.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
So we know that now that that that these groups
are really exclusive, that people white people, but even of
other races aren't hanging out together. Yep. And so since
the nineteen fifties, segregation is outlawed in the United States,
and yet people still aren't coming together. And so when
we think about the spaces historically or even over these
(12:00):
last sixty seventy years where people have different race are
coming together, So where are they? They might be in schools, right, yep, yep,
that's right, they might be in the military.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
That's right. Probably one of the biggest areas that people
often celebrate as places where prejudice and segregation broke down.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
In fact, once we were at a baseball game in Denver,
you and me, and because we're together, everyone around us
was saying, you guys must have been in the military together, right,
because they had never seen like black and white friends together.
That's right. You know, sports becomes this kind of like,
you know, almost like a metaphor for bringing people together
under these you know, equal areas where people with different
experiences could bond.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
And I guess William Hollywood Movies telling this story.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yes, in a workplace, right, so places that are beyond
your own private sphere, which are somehow public, yep.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
And so for you and me, like that's kind of
our story, right. We come of age in the nineteen eighties,
meeting in our integrated high school.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
And you know, so we're in this integrated space of
all these ways, and a lot of people even from
our high school and shared our experiences, didn't become lifelong
friends with people of different races, just by the statistics
we're even cited.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Which creates this really, this a conundrum, right because to
some degree, you know, we are a product of a
moment of integration in America. We grew up in an
integrated neighborhood, We go to an integrated high school. We
have these integrated experiences, and it's like it turns out
we are like rare creatures relative to the vast majority
(13:39):
of white or black people.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
But I also don't think I don't think there are
any conversations like, you know, you should have even on
the other sense, oh you should have you know, friends
across racial boundaries, you should have more friends. I don't
think it was just talked about did you have conversations
like that of like the meaning of this not at all.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
I mean, at best, I would say we really were
kind of in an integrated neighborhood on the South side
Chicago and High Park. It was largely middle class, which
mitigated against the ways in which low income people often
are doubly burdened and stigmatized, and in a way that
like some people might be remembering their black friends from
their suburban high school or something like, you know, I
(14:22):
wasn't busted in to go to.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
School with you, right, and the community.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah, you didn't come from some like white part of
town to go to this integrated high school. You lived
in a black neighborhood. So there were some unique things
about being in an integrated community. And I got to say,
like I adopted your parents very early on. I called
your parents Ma and Paul, Like, I can't remember a
time when I haven't called them that. Now you called
my mom.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
What shorty rough? She was a stand in mom, And
so that sense too of our larger family circle sort
of you know that this is being normalized and part
of our experiences that And then I guess i'd say, like,
you know, it wasn't like my parents were the only
white and Jewish adults you knew, and for me it
(15:08):
was and like your mom was the only black woman
I knew. That's right because student for those figures, because.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
You had a soon to be black mother in law Carol's.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
House, That's right, I was. Yeah, So this is the
other thing about in you know, as we're dating across
racial lines, do you think we ever talked about that
of like what that meant beyond you know, the either
the intrigue or the dangers or the significance. Did we
I don't remember ever having a conversation specifically about like
(15:39):
about about race and dating.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yeah, that's a good point. I mean I don't remember
like in our mutual friendship groups, there was definitely we
weren't the only ones. But I have to say, like
I mean, counterintuitive probably to other people, it was because
of your black girlfriend now wife, Danielle, that I had
two of my high school sweethearts. I mean, like it was.
It was a win win for me. No matter how
(16:01):
we look at.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
It, you might have not dated any black girls if
it wasn't for me dating a black girl. Is what
you're saying.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
No, that is not That is not what I'm saying.
But befive, listen, We're going to talk more about this
as we go from being boys to men and grow
up and really unpack interracial friendships and look at a
little bit more research to see how it helps us
explain what's been going on in this country.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
We'll be right back after the break.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
All right, we are back on some of my best
friends are and Khalil and I are talking about interracial friendships.
This is a meta episode in a way. And Khalil,
we've been thinking about how how studies, how research explains
even our friendship. And so you had just said right
before the break, it's one thing to be friends as kids,
(16:59):
but but what does it mean to be friends as adults.
That's a whole other. A whole other issue and what
does it.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Mean you just have a friendship that lasts, right. A
lot of people were like, oh, yeah, you know one
of my best friends was filling the blank when I
was in high school. What I haven't talked to this
person in twenty years.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah. So there's this book from twenty nineteen and it's
written by several sociologists. It's called In the Company We Keep,
and it's exactly about this subject. It's about interracial friendships
and about this transition from childhood to adulthood. The authors
looked at and analyzed Americans who were kids in seventh
(17:35):
to twelfth grade in the nineteen nineties, essentially us right
at this time when multiculturalism is being celebrated as like
the American ideal. Yes, yes, And then they grow up
and the researchers study them again in two thousand and
eight when they're between they're about thirty years old. So
we're in the Obama era, the so called post racial America.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
This wholehold we go from color blindness to post racialism
with this, with these two cohorts of young people.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
And a lot of people fifteen thousand people to sort
of think of that they were friends as teenagers what
happened as adults?
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Right, These are fifteen thousand respondents. This is the basis
of the study, and here's what they found. I mean,
the simple story they found is that kids who attend
more diverse schools like the one we went to were
more likely to have what they call cross racial friendships
as adults, even if they didn't have them as kids,
meaning as younger kids. That's pretty big deal and helps
(18:30):
to lay the foundation for you know how. The research
tells us what are the necessary conditions for interracial friendships
to thrive.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So underlining that again, going to an interracial school is
a huge deal. This is defining in terms of having
cross racial friendships.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yes, but it turns out that even that reality and
knowing that reality, going back to the nineteen fifties, at
the end of legal segregation in the Brown Versus Board
of Education decision, the line separating black and white people
in the United States is still stronger than any other
racial groups, meaning black and white people are still not together,
(19:11):
which probably is as much a story about the failure
of integration and housing in so many other spaces than
anything else.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
So meaning they may not have gone to interracial schools exactly,
and even if they had, they still it didn't last
over time.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Or that they went to schools, but people were being
bussed and shuttled about and it wasn't actually extending in
the classroom.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Yeah. Yeah. So in this same study, they also looked
at interracial romantic relationships, so not just friendships but friends
with benefits and got it, and they found the same thing.
They found that you were much more likely to have
across racial romantic relationship if you went to a diverse school,
(19:56):
and they also found that you were more likely to
get with somebody of a different race if you had
a friend of a different race. That's me. That's the
wingman theory of interracial day. If you want to date
across racial lines, you need a wingman who's of the
race you want to date. That's what it explains that.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
So what you're saying is it's only because of me
that you have this beautiful black woman as your wife
that you've had for how long have you all been married?
I've lost track.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Now, yeah, a little bit, a little bit, But you
might be right, you might be right, But these researchers
are actually finding that if you actually have a more
authentic relationship with another culture. It's more likely that this
is a kind of real relationship. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
So, like essentially the hot that person's exotic to me
kind of flash in the pan love interest is not
what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Well, I want to talk about when we grow up
a little bit. So let's talk about college. Because to
be honest with you, Ben, I mean, all that we've
been talking about about our origin story, that's just four
years of our relationship. We're going on like thirty seven.
So and we you know, we didn't spend time together
really after high school for long time. We both go
our separate ways.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, And the truth is, like, so if we were
in an interracial space as teenagers, we both go to
predominantly white colleges.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
We both pronominantly white, overwhelmingly white.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Overwhelmingly white. Yes, we go into these spaces and separately.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yes, yes, right, So you're at the University of Rochester.
I go to the University of Pennsylvania. And I have
to tell you, man, I went to pen like I
didn't know shit about structural racism. I mean, I know
it's counterintuitive. Some people might think about my identity and
all of that, and what I do today, but kind
of the specialness of my childhood did not prepare me
(21:47):
for what I encountered when I became five percent of
pens black population in nineteen eighty nine, when I became
a freshman and.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
You had a white roommate. Freshman year, I remember, I had.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
A white room mate, Peter.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Like he was.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
He was taller than you, and I went from like,
you know, tall tall buddy to even taller buddy. Peter
and I got along swimmingly, but we did not become
friends right we defined.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
I remember search. I remember visiting you on campus and
staying in his bed and it was kind of funky. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Well, he wore the same blue jees literally all year long.
I just honestly, by the end of the year they
were standing up in the corner. But outside of Peter
as my freshman year roommate. Out of four years at Penn,
I literally met and kept as a close friend, one
white guy.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
I mean, I just want to say, they're like, they're
like twenty five white guys who are listening to this now,
and They're like, damn, I thought I thought we were
still friends.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I thought, No, let me, I mean this sincerely, like
if I had mostly white friends in high school, it
was just the opposite. In college, my whole world became
you know, African American this and that. I had tons
of black friends. I joined a fraternity, to a black, traditional,
(23:02):
historically black fraternity my freshman year, and I mean, it
just it made my life wonderful. I mean, and there's
no critique whatsoever. But it could not have been more
different than what I'd experienced growing.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Up, which is so interesting. So in this overwhelmingly white space,
you create your own overwhelmingly black bubble within it.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Well, I mean black people do that anyway, but you know, yeah,
most of the world, when you're in segregated Black America
or segregated white America, Yeah, black people figure out how
to make sense of their smallness of population relative to
white people in all the powerful ways white people exist
among us.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Yeah. So I'm thinking what you said, and again how
much I thought about structural racism before these dynamics. We
just took so much for granted, it was weird going
to a school that was overwhelmingly white. It was weird
for me. And I'm thinking back to even teen years
in youth, like one of my experiences or partly what
(24:03):
defined my experience of being the only one in a
lot of spaces.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Oh, you mean being the only one guy among people.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Which is which is a kind of valuable perspective to
get to think about race, you know, to think about
like what what most minorities experience all the time. It's
just like and then to know like, oh, my whiteness
is a thing rather than a neutral thing or it
doesn't exist. You know that that whiteness is also race,
because I'm being seen from my race right now. And
(24:33):
to enter in a space where that that calculus never
came up, it was disorienting. There wasn't the equivalent thing
to do that you just said, which is like let
me create my own Like I didn't join in all
black space, and it wasn't like let me maybe in
some really small way, I found a group of integrated
people that like, like, that's their value.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
You were trying to recreate kind of what home had been.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Like Yeah, but it was impossible to do. It was
impossible to do in this situation.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
That's so fascinating because I didn't feel like I was
consciously doing something in search of a black identity. But
I have to say to you like, I get it.
There weren't there wasn't home on campus. It was one
or the other.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
So I'm thinking about how you and I communicated this
even during that time, Like we did, yes talk about
our experiences, we probably talked more about about some of
these racial issues as they came up and over the
summers where we hung out NonStop still because it was
just part of our experience. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Well, I was thinking about that because I think actually
the strength of our relationship in college was less about
what happened during the school year when we were away
from each other, even with these occasional visits, and more
about how we reconnected when we came home. And in
that sense, I think our relationship deepened and strengthened because
while we were changing in these other environments that monopolized
most of our lives. You know, for those two months
(25:58):
we were home, man, we were actually working. And that's
when we came up with our favorite pastime, which was
competitive support. Remember that metaphor for working out together.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Or doing whatever we're doing, yeah, hanging out together, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
So we would challenge ourselves within the context of like
if we challenge ourselves by how much more weight we
could lift today, or how many more basketball games we
can play in one day? We'll be better at everything.
And that was really that was a special time. I mean,
our summers together in college were incredible.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
And this is a question about I mean, this is
actually might be outside of race, but it's impossible not
to consider it when you think about our dynamics. But
this is just about how any two people solidify a
friendship from childhood into adulthood, because I'm thinking about two
moments between us, and one is when I was like
in my early twenties, I traveled abroad, and when I
(26:48):
came back, you were the one who picked me up
at the airport and you were working in Chicago. You
were dating someone I had been away for over a
year yep. And I remember us having like, in that moment,
a very like explicit conversation of how to like recalibrate
our friendship in adult terms.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
I remember the feeling. I literally have an image of
this day of you getting off the air poor.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
You had like this weird haircut, like a.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Buzz stud, and I hadn't seen I hadn't seen you
where with that look before. But I don't remember the conversation,
so what do we say to each other.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
We need to get to know each other as adults.
Whatever presumptions we have about each other, we have to
sort of think about them. Anew, let's like, let's like
not presume anything and think about also the ways that
we've changed.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Yeah, and I gets it.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
It was a really useful conversation to like move forward.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Yeah, I get that.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Here here's the other thing, Khalil that when we were
in our twenties and I had gone to graduate school
and I was thinking about my next thing, and I
started teaching. You had been working as an accountant, and
at that time you decided to become a historian, to
enter a PhD program in history. And the question is, like,
(27:58):
if you had remained an accountant, whether we would still
be friends. That's a right question. It's like a joke
in a way, but I'm also serious, Like our interests
totally aligned, like our lifelong interest aligned. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
I think honestly, it's fair to say that had I
stayed on that route, we may not have stayed as close.
I think it would have been a closeness issue because
the things we could talk about, the things we could share.
I mean, and the truth is like it was your
father who had been who was and it continues to
be a historian at the University of Chicago as a
(28:33):
retired professor. Like, he's one of the first people I
talked about when I was about to make that move.
And so even thinking about, like the life trajectory I
was on ran through a relationship with your own father,
which meant it ran through you.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
And then the shared interest, you know, not coincidentally, is
about race and inequity and just these issues like these
are the things that we've been talking about for the
last thirty years, and we've shared that exploration and that
path together. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, I mean, the more I think about, if we
could invent a new race, it would be you and
me together. Hm hmm.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Well that's weird. Let's let's let's let's take let's take
a short break, and when we come back, let's think
about the ways that these interracial relationships, these friendships, what
do they even matter? Like what difference do they make?
Speaker 4 (29:41):
All?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Right?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Man, So we've mapped basically our whole friendship, you know,
and here we are working together, we're making a freaking
podcast together and talking about our past all the time,
and so pretty clear that whatever.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Map podcast about talking about our past.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Yes, so it's pretty clear that whatever we've been up
to for a long time works because after all, after all,
like the whole point of our show, the point of
interracial friendship is also like how do we reduce use
racism and all the fucking damage and death in mayhem
that comes with it.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Yeah, now the stakes are incredibly high for this. I mean,
it really matters that people do come in contact. So
the first study that we cited that listed all the
statistics about white people and black people having their own
sort of exclusive social networks that they're not hanging out
with people across race. They also in that study asked
(30:34):
people questions, and they found that white people who didn't
have black people or other people of other race in
their social networks were less likely to think that the slavery,
the legacy of slavery and discrimination still mattered that had
an impact on society. They were less likely to think
that a history of racism mattered. This is like defines
(30:56):
our political moment our divide here in the country right now.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah, so there's actually a huge cost to the failure
of people to experience a meaningful integrated relationship and ship,
because at the end of the day, these folks that
you just described, you know, white people who don't have
integrated social networks, basically dismissed structural racism. And so you
can't solve for structural racism if a majority of the
(31:23):
white population doesn't even think it's real.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Nom hmmm. So let's think about us and sort of
as a model for this.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Yeah. Yeah, So I like to put it this way.
We know that segregation is rampant in American society and
to some degree as bad or worse in some instances
than it was in the nineteen fifties and sixties. And
so integration is necessary but may not be entirely sufficient.
So let's talk about what more we think might be required.
(31:56):
And I think that's when the broader set of experiences
that we had. So you could live in an integrated community,
you could go to an integrated school, and yet if
the parents and the social network that you're actually part
of this integrated isn't fully invested in your relationship, right,
then it's probably not going to be the strongest outcome.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Yeah. So we were talking about you know, both of
our parents, our sets of parents were like embraced each
other fully as their standing child. Everyone around us was like, yeah,
that friendship is meaningful. Yeah, our bosses, our coaches, our
other friends.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
That's right, John, mister g shout out. The whole community
to some degree supported you and me. And I'll just say,
for the record, I don't have any other white friends
from my high school years. All those people I talked
about at the top of this show, like, I didn't
have any relationships with their parents. I mean I went
over their houses a few times to have to have
a meal, you know, for one reason or another. But
(32:56):
there was nothing that came anywhere close than my relationship
with Ralph and Ernestein.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
There are some old Jewish people in Hyde Park who
just like calling their lawyers. They're changing their will right now.
You had been in it and now you're out.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
I'm talking about my high school friends, high school friends only.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Well.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
I have one final takeaway, and it's an important one
because I teach about Kenneth Clark, the famous social psychologists
who did the Doll studies in the nineteen forties that
ultimately helped to inform the story that segregation was deeply
harmful and led to the Brown versus Board of Education decision.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
So Kenneth Clark described, yeah, describe yeah a little bit.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
So it kind of encapsulates all that we've been talking about.
So ten years later, in nineteen sixty five, Ish Kenneth
Clark writes a book called Dark Ghettos. And in this
book he's looking at the failure of integrated high schools
in New York City. And so here's a guy famous
for helping to desegregate Southern schools. But ten years later
he's like, schools in New York City are so segregated
(34:00):
they are also deeply harmful to not just black kids.
And here's the biggest takeaway. He said, an integrated school,
whether it was in New York or Birmingham, Alabama, was
not just about increasing literacy at test scores and what
kids learned. It was about building relationships. It was about
a social contract. That is that democracy itself depended upon
(34:24):
black and white people being together for long periods of time,
getting to know each other, and working together to solve
complicated problems, even if they were math problems in third grades.
It was the fundamental building block for a democratic, just racial,
egalitarian society.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yeah. Yeah, the sense of that the schools an integrated
school is so vital to have any of this going on.
And what we know is that that doesn't even exist today,
that seventy years after desegregation, we still have these structures
that keep us apart. And basically, you know, if people
(35:03):
are in proximity to one another, if they're in contact
with one another, that's not going to that's not enough.
I mean, we've talked about all the ways that we
have more, but that is the start that people need.
They need that start, they need that contact to begin something.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Yeah, and without it, the bottom line is you can't
build on it. There's no foundation. It's all broken. And
so this is where we begin.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Folks.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Next time you call us, who'll say, The next time
there's a proposal to do something with our schools that
open up access to them, you say, yes we can.
The next time there's a new zoning proposal to the
township officials to do affordable housing, you say, yes we can,
because those are the fundamental structures that keep us apart
and make it nearly impossible to see the kind of
(35:48):
friendships that you and I have lived, loved and enjoyed
all these years.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yes we can, Obama, I like that Khalil, You're loving
on some Obama. I love you man, love you too.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of
Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me
Khalil Dubron Mohammad and my best friend Ben Austin.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
This show is produced by Lucy Sullivan. It's edited by
Sarah Nix with help from Keyshel Williams. Our engineer is
Amanda Kwang and our managing producer is Constanza Gallardo.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
At Pushkin thanks to Leitol Molad, Julia Barton, Heather Fain,
Carly Migliori, John Schnarz, Greta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan the
brilliant Avery R. Young from his album Tubman. You definitely
want to check out his music at his website Averyaryong
dot com.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin
pods and you can sign up for our newsletter at
pushkin dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
And if you like our show, please give us a
five star rating and a review and listen even if
you don't like it, give it a five star rating
and a review, and please tell all of your best
friends about it. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Ebony and Ivory, Perfect Harmony and Perfect Time Money side
by side on my piano keyboard.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Why don't you love Me,
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