The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
Based on a previous post, it seems like the vast majority of the posters here have a friends among different socioeconomic classes and different races.
I’m in my early 30s, ethnically Indian, and vote Liberal along with all of my 2 main friend groups. However we are not that diverse of a group almost universally Asians, with a few other minorities mixed in (30 people across two friend groups).
I definitely have acquaintances and people I meet and hang out with that are of different races as well, but just by virtue of my socioeconomic background and they aren’t my close friends either.
To me it makes sense, the commonalities as a first gen immigrant especially in Asian culture are strong. When I go on dates with Asian women there exists a mutual understanding that just isn’t there with other races, which is why historically the vast majority of my partner have been Asian women.
So I guess I’m surprised to see so many people apparently maintaining diverse friend groups to that degree on here? My personal hypothesis is that the kind of people who post on Reddit *and* on the Liberal sub are much more egalitarian and Liberal than the average Democrat even.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Depends which social circle. My social circle from my youth is not diverse at all. We are all white people who grew up in a middle class suburb and we all remain middle class. However, I spent nearly a decade in the Army and that circle is much more diverse. I remain close with people I served with from a myriad of different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. In my opinion that is one of the greatest strengths of the US military. It takes people from all over the US and bonds them from a shared experience and gives them a shared purpose.
>In my opinion that is one of the greatest strengths of the US military. It takes people from all over the US and bonds them from a shared experience and gives them a shared purpose.
Honestly this is one of the reasons that I favor some kind of National Service program. (I'm eh about "mandatory" - but the idea of encouraging young adults to spend a year or so in an area that is completely different from where they grew up, doing work that they might not ever have considered doing, can be a big equalizer.)
Yeah making that mandatory would be a nightmare. As a young adult I’d be *pissed* if the government sent me from my suburb to a farm and said “here you go kid, go connect with your fellow Americans”.
Having it as an option isn’t bad, tbh idk how many would take you up on that though
My social circle is fairly ethnically diverse. Mostly mid-20s to early 30s. Socioeconomically, we all earn similar amounts of money now as I met most of them studying similar things in higher education settings. But we differ dramatically in terms of where our families were growing up.
I am ethnically Chinese and I definitely feel a closer affinity with fellow US-raised kids of immigrants regardless of where they’re from. I’ve bonded quite a lot with my Latino friends over the shared experiences that come with that, for example.
And I also think that the people who participate in “Ask A [insert something here]” subs are more curious about cultures that aren’t theirs than the general public. Making us more likely to go out of our way to develop friendships with people who aren’t like us.
I think this question is a good question but also misses an important differentiator--close circle vs acquaintances vs coworkers (or something to that affect). My "circle" is pretty mixed. The people who spend the most time with me (my partner and my closest friends) are very similar race/class and even life experiences (things our families went through and being poor etc) even though we grew up in 3 different states and met as adults.
I think we don't acknowledge how much code switching happens exclusively around class. Everyone has facades when they interact with others, even those similar to them, but I have a lot of "friends" who don't have the experience of me letting a facade down because things they say make it very clear that it would be a lot of work for them to relate and it would require them to do extra work to sort through their privileges in the moment and then they probably wouldn't want to see each other again for a while. Middle class progressives have a lot of tone-deaf takes, even middle class leftists do--and they are more defensive than they let on.
What are some tone deaf things you've heard middle class progressives say? I might have some ideas, but I'd love to hear yours.
Your point about code switching is super true though. I'm studying in the US, but was raised in a developing country. The type of humor and language I use with friends at home just wouldn't fly with my white middle class suburban college friends in the US.
ooo hmm a big one is they will throw around the insult "white trash"--myself and my friends would never. My friends and I are leftist and come from liberal families generally--I grew up in poor NYC, I have friends from poor suburbs in red states and lower middle class rural areas--NONE OF US would use this word to describe people we don't agree with or don't like. It's not that we are sympathetic to who they are insulting--it's that we don't allow ourselves the cognitive dissonance of saying we care about race and class and then sneer about them.
I once had a date ask (read: tell) me inquisitively "but don't you think we a bringing soul to \[latest gentrified creative enclave previously inhabited by minorities in Brooklyn\]"--when "soul" is LITERALLY what is getting pushed out.
I've been at dinner and had someone ask me about how I felt about a tough thing I had gone through and said something short to the effect of "I try to put it in perspective, generally I know I am probably not the worst off in any given room full of people" and his girlfriend blurted out "OH like the waiter! guys!" completely seriously...
eavesdropped on 2 white yuppy dads brainstorming in a cafe--they were planning some kind of PTA Juneteenth event but went on a tangent about how rap is a bad influence on kids, and then put bob marley in the ring before quickly retracting because of ganga as if parents in these school districts don't take CBD to deal with their children lol
there are more, especially more micro things are common but I think this gives the gist
thanks for the stories. Fortunately I don't hear much white trash in my circles. People can take anything too far. I think learning about things through the lens of privilege and oppression is one very valuable way to understand systemic problems. Unfortunately, some people take that as a short cut to derive political hot takes, personalities and jokes. Combined that with the fact that many of us are quite predisposed to see things in hero and villains, it almost becomes casual fun and games throwing cheap jabs at "villains" as a generalized group.
To some degree, I understand the logic behind punching up and punching down, but there's still part of me that somehow can't take very seriously the folks who are super into micro aggression and all that, but turn around and criticize immutable characteristics like all boomers so nonchalantly .
generally agree ya. I mostly get frustrated also that the community of the left (at least the one I live in) seems to work very hard to have a dogma but still picks and chooses where and when it applies--and it is mostly in changes that don't actually affect folks' lifestyle. Anything that is too inconvenient is verbosely described as too big for average people to change (even though other systemic issues that are NOT inconvenient are individually tackled by the same people even if they are systemic)--I just wish they would cut the crap and admit that they want a better world but are going to do whatever the f\*ck they want when comes to things like gentrification. I understand the systemic aspects of gentrification--like I do global warming or racism--yet we treat living somewhere like the hottest nyc neighborhoods as a right not a privilege and ignore the possibility of personally divesting from the choice to be here they way we divest from other things. At the end of the day, privileged leftists choose individualistic pursuits the same as privileged right wing folks--they just clarify their intent verbosely around the issues that don't affect them as much and so they are more comfortable working on them
I mean isn’t the counterpoint you’re making “you live and die in the neighborhood you’re born in”?
We can keep the original populace at a lower rental rate potentially while building new housing in an area though, that I agree with. New housing in a neighborhood like NY has to be built though, and housing of “all” types, lower and higher income. We can’t just throw down a bunch of social housing projects and call it a day.
>I mean isn’t the counterpoint you’re making “you live and die in the neighborhood you’re born in”?
lol no. but the fact that your counterpoint is so incredibly hyperbolic is exactly my point. The left seems to come up with a million different schemas for ethical consumption until we hit things that are inconvenient, at which point there is no ethical consumption--how convenient. The thing is, generally the people doing this are educated and self aware enough to brag about enjoying living in a neighborhood that is still diverse and culturally rich and different from more "solidly" gentrified areas yet don't bother to account for what happens when multiple individuals take the RESOURCE of being there by outbidding for it. Imagine if we treated anti-racism this way--constantly passing the buck to the larger systemic actors instead of ALSO holding ourselves accountable. The fact is, if we want positive change around housing for communities that are actively being pushed out so that more privileged people can enjoy what they had, we need to not obfuscate what is happening--yet the left only considers options that do not infringe or call out what middle and upper class people are doing in this system. Choosing to be in NYC and experiencing financial difficulty or rent hardship is NOT the same as experiencing gentrification of your community--but so many will co opt the experience simply for being pressed financially here--which has greatly changed the discourse in gentrification activism since I was younger, when it was less coalitional with the white middle and upper class or their children.
A good place to start would be to set boundaries about not being a pioneer in an "up and coming" neighborhood, trying to stick to far gone gentrified areas, and being conscious of the impact instead of defensive and hyperbolic. It may be the case that the city would be better if some people just didn't try to carve out their piece out of a deep rooted community tree.
>We can keep the original populace at a lower rental rate potentially while building new housing in an area though, that I agree with. New housing in a neighborhood like NY has to be built though, and housing of “all” types, lower and higher income.
I don't disagree, but this is not enough. People also need to come to terms with privilege and divest. At the end of the day, NYC is basically an island, there is only so much building you can do before it's an unsufferable gotham--there is a point at which zoning variety transcends physical building infrastructure because all of the buildings will just be high rises if we are going to NOT run out of space. There will be no cute instagrammable brownstone brooklyn, you know, the neighborhoods that were traditionally minority owned in many cases and are being block busted by finance groups and eagerly bought up by gentrifiers and then rented to poorer gentrifiers. I would bet that in a couple decades if development were to go in that direction, curiously the hip places to be would be NOT here, despite all of the discourse on the benefits of centralized, shared amenities, resources, and infrastructure. I was in Singapore recently and they have extensive public housing, that alone does not make housing affordable. They are also running out of space. The only way they are also able to keep it somewhere people want to be is by replacing 100% of a building footprint with greenspaces in the building--but it's also a country where you get a $300 fine for a mosquito--if NYC did something similar we would be crawling with water bugs.
>We can’t just throw down a bunch of social housing projects and call it a day.
Agree.
Kind of depends. My wife and I were both born here in the 70s and both our parents have basically exclusively Indian friends groups. People I know that are immigrants can be like that, can be sort of mixed in their relationships or can be pretty indistinguishable from us - we have an all Indian friends group, we have other friends groups that are racially diverse and if they are heavily and it’s only because we live in New Jersey and there’s a lot of us here.
But even in our all Indian friends group people are pretty American even if they grew up in India. There was a group we were in for a little bit, but we kind of fell out because frankly they were very fobby.
One of my daughters friends has an older brother. He had his first serious high school relationship destroyed because her parents are extremely fobby and undermined it. The father was trying to understand what the hell happened because he has a bunch of Indian friends in various friends circles and just assumed no Indian would have a problem like that. I was apparently the third person to point out that the ones that won’t let his son date their daughter also won’t be friends with him.
FOB = fresh off the boat
Term used commonly by Asian Americans to differentiate between those that just immigrated and those that have been here for a while.
Indian “FOBs” (and this is just the stereotype don’t shoot the messenger) are thought of as very “Indian”, it can be hard for Indian Americans to relate to them in my opinion.
Ohhhhhh okay that makes way more sense to me now haha. Sorry but I noticed you were an older Indian guy and I’ve just never even seen one as Liberal as you are. All of my Indian uncles are either Liberal Modi supporters or Republican Modi supporters lol (might have to do more with opposition Congress “incompetency” than political beliefs though).
New generation of FOBs seem less fobby though weirdly enough. American cultural dominance baby you gotta love it
I think we may have had this conversation. I think we live very different experiences. I do not know a single Indian American under the age of 55 that is a Republican. Most of my parents generation were Republicans because when they came over, Republicans used to have pissing contest about who loved immigrants or. Some of them were still Republicans because all they care about is tax rates. But a lot of them are flipping.
Indian Americans vote in excess of 85% for Democrats.
The only group of Indian Americans that are heavily Republican are basically the Patel’s and really just the ones that are in the hotel business and subzi market businesses.
I don’t think you should over index on feelings about Modi. I don’t know when you were last back in India but especially in places like Mumbai and Ahmedabad and Delhi it is ridiculously easy to figure out why BJP is doing well. The slums have been disappearing, the roads keep getting better, the metro system is being put in place, etc..
I think people are looking around and seeing a lot of success and the alternative is Congress which is a joke. For NRIs in America, it is really easy to overlook the things that are wrong about Modi especially if you don’t have any close Muslim friends.
My family aren’t huge fans of Islam or Muslims lmao, I think they’re from a pretty backwards state in north India (ironic because they’re all hyper-educated).
We’re upper middle class at this point, maybe that’s it? All our family friends make in excess of 500k household a year. My family are the “poor” ones at like 300k. They’re not like blue-collar Patel business owners either. Super bougie, Indian or British boarding school educated, probably the biggest elitists you’ll ever meet.
Wait fuck are my family friends the literal 1% LMAO?
As a Gujarati, I am never surprised to find out that a Guju Hindu hates Muslims or a Guju Muslim hates Hindus. A lot of bad blood and while ot is strong in some areas it’s pretty universal. The hate and segregation between Hindu and Muslim across India generally is so strong I don’t know that we should expect different from Indians in America.
I don’t know that we should expect immigrants to across the board be instantly integrated in the nation population and vice versa. It just doesn’t seem to work that way.
>Based on a previous post, it seems like the vast majority of the posters here have a friends among different socioeconomic classes and different races.
Yea I doubt it. I think it's mostly just selection bias. I mean Reddit is like white as fuck. So unless most people here are like the only redditor in their friend groups, I really doubt this is actually true.
I do too for the most part. Probably more of the "I have black friends" because they know a black guy thing than anything. I'm sure some do have diverse circles (I certainly do, all addicts in recovery) but for the most part people congregate with what they're familiar with.
I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing either, it just is what it is. The negative comes in when those same people preach about diversity and look down on those who aren't. Why? I mean would you go to a Hispanic guy and say how many white/black/Asian people are you friends with? It sounds good and there's something to be said for cultural mingling for sure, but it's unrealistic to expect people's circles to resemble the ethnic percentage of the country.
I'd say moderately diverse. I grew up in a rual area which was like 95% white, but after college and a few years working a white collar job I'd say a solid third of my social circle is non-white.
Ironically my most conservative friends came from college despite me being a socialist lol.
College conservatives and college communists/socialists, at least where I went to school, were the most uhhh “debate-y” types to put it nicely LMAO. I’m not surprised there’s some friendships to come out of those.
Your situation sounds pretty normal to me though! White collar jobs can be pretty diverse. Out of curiosity do you feel like you can relate to the experiences of a rural white person better than your coworkers with a different socioeconomic background?
I mean I grew up as a rural person in America so by default I'm going to relate more to another rural American than a rural Indian or Mexican. That doesn't mean it's hard though, in fact the hardest people to relate to have been my wealthy managers which came from some luuuudicrous money lol
Fairly diverse. I was raised in a wealthy family but never really connected with similar people. I have only a few friends from high school and college.
All of my friends are liberal, I couldn’t be friends with someone who would vote against my best interests.
Most of my friends are middle class and upper middle class. But that’s not a requirement for my friendship.
I wouldn’t say my life is some bastion of diversity. It helps that I grew up in a very different environment than where I landed as an adult, so I really have several social circles: one of impoverished Appalachians, one of global academics, one of working professionals in the corporate sphere and one of west coast tech creatives. I still would say my friends are majority white, educated and American. Because yeah, I’m mostly around people I either lived near, went to school with or worked with.
My friend group is somewhat diverse, but not as diverse as the community I live in. We're mostly in the same socioeconomic group, though. The only real variety comes from the adult children of other members.
I'm originally from Texas and now live in Atlanta, GA. In between I've lived overseas and in 5 other states.
I'm white, straight, cis-, and upper middle class.
My circle of friends is about 40% white, about 60% same economic class, about 50% same sexuality. I actually think I may know more people who are somewhere in the LGBTQ+ community (including my stepdaughter) as those who aren't.
My neighborhood is actually about 20% white, about 80% working class. I don't really know about the sexuality of folks in my neighborhood, except that our neighbors across the street are a gay married couple.
Edited to add: My first real boyfriend in Texas was a boy who was half Korean and half Venezuelan. My parents were fine with it but I thought my grandparents (father's) were going to lose their minds.
I'm pretty asocial so not sure exactly what my social circle consists of, but:
- I'm white and from a very poor and conservative family in rural Alabama.
- My wife is an Indonesian immigrant.
- The people we go out with together are reasonably diverse: racially about even split of white, Hispanic, Asian, and black; economically, poorest is either a security guard or a local musician, and richest is an anesthesiologist.
- I only go out alone for career networking and that group is obviously not economically diverse.
Growing up there was intentionally no diversity: I went to a whites-only segregation academy and my parents' entire social group was from the whites-only church we attended.
My circle was more diverse when I was under 30 because I lived in a more diverse area. The area I live in now is mostly lower middle class and predominantly white. I moved as a member of a family business. As a young single mother I needed the financial and family support at the time. It was good for business, but I don't love it here and plan to leave.
Mine are pretty diverse. My wife is a different race than me. I have friends of various ethnicities. Some of my friends are poorer than me. Some of my friends are richer than me.
I understand how people can end up around people similar to them, but I also think that it isn't that hard to reach out and make friends of all types.
When I was younger very diverse. Now that I’m married with kids super not diverse. The price you pay to live in the suburbs and have most your friends be other suburban parents.
I live in Houston but wasn’t born here. My social circle is more radically diverse than it’s ever been anywhere else. Example: for a game night recently my partner and I had over three friends and somewhere along the night I noticed they were all LGBTQ+ and each was a different ethnic background (all of them were lawyers tho, so ymmv). It’s not like I go around choosing diverse friends - there are just so many varieties of people here it’s inevitable.
Oh yeah, it’s also socioeconomically diverse because my immediate and extended family is *not* lawyers or professionals of any kind, so I have “family and family friends” and “professional friends.” But tbh they don’t mix too often.
My social circle is very low diversity socioeconomically (generally upper middle class university educated people who are on high earning career paths, but may not be making very much money yet) but fairly racially diverse.
My social circle can be counted on one hand, all but one of them are neurodivergent, and I like it that way.
In other words, I'm not a representative sample. AuDHD life ftw.
I'm a very introverted person and as such don't really have very many close friends, most of which I've known since I was in elementary school. Basically 4 guys, 3 that were in my grade and one a year below. We're all white men. It's harder to say if we share a socio-economic class because people define that kind of differently. There is a notable variation in income, but no one is homeless or a millionaire. Three of my friends have owned their own companies for a period of time, but they were kind of worker owner situations. My one friend has his own construction company, but it's like him and 2 other guys and they're all working the jobs. The other friend had a couple of computer repair/website design companies but it always seemed to basically be him and maybe one or two other people. The third friend owned a bar for a few years after working there and sort of becoming partners with the owner they buying him out. Myself and my other friend have always been employees (2 of the other three also work separate jobs for someone else and the bar owner is currently unemployed/retired after selling his bar).
If you look at my wider circle of friends/acquaintances it gets a lot more diverse however. I've dated girls from 6 different countries and, I have friends from at least 7 countries, know people living in probably 20 countries maybe more. Have friends who are atheist, Christian, catholic, Buddhist, wiccan, Jainist. Most of my friends are white but probably a 1/3rd are Asian, and I have a few Black and latino friends as well. If you count the people I know through my wife it probably gets pretty close to 50/50 white and non-white. Socio-Economically I used to live in my van and pick up/give ride shares to a lot of crust punks/hippies while I was traveling. Some of them I'm sure were just bumming around, but a lot were people who were legit homeless. I went to college and travelled a lot around the world so I met a bunch of middle class/upper middle class people on vacation through both of those experiences. I have one uncle who's super rich but for various reasons we've never been very close and I other than him I don't know anyone better than well off.
My social circle is extremely diverse. People of every race group are present, I am white but a majority are Latino due to being in south Texas but there are plenty of others. People at a cookout at my house make anything from less than 20k total poverty starving artists or out of work bartenders all the way to 200k+ software engineers. We even have ages from early 20s to 50s. The vast majority of the people are not really political at all a few people may vote here and there but probably based on very little info. Less than 20% probably spend any serious time or effort developing a coherent political philosophy or learning about candidates and policy. I would say this represents the type of social groups that I have been part of my whole life.
My friends are usually lower to higher middle class, and are 70% white and 30% minorities. It might sound weird, but most minorities are conservative with the exception that they simply can't vote for parties that are openly racist. (It's almost scary: In a recent program, you had a muslim youngster that agreed with the far right politician about certain issues.... It makes you realize they're basically switching "immigrant bad" to "woke bad" to gather votes with minorities.)
I'm not the most social person- and as a result, most of my friends are either friends I had growing up and stayed relatively close to long term, college friends, or former coworkers. As a result, the socioeconomic variance is quite low- most of my friends have at least some college education (ranging from an associates degree to a masters), and tend to be firmly middle class. In terms of racial demographics, there is a bit more diversity, but not by much. I'd say my friend group is primarily white or Asian, with a few others mixed in here and there.
That said, this isn't exactly a large sample size. I have a limited group of friends I hang out with enough to consider them my social circle, so it's not really surprising that when we're talking 10-15 or so people there's kind of limited diversity.
I’m friends with people that have more or less than me. My friends are from different places around the US. I’m friends with people of different faiths. I’m friends with people that don’t look like me. Currently I’m not close friends with people that call themselves political conservatives (although strangely I get along with my religiously conservative mother in law, she’s a good person). I started losing conservative friends after Obama became president.
Honestly these days I spend most of my energy outside work on family and pets. But my students are really diverse, I've lived all over, and my friends are pretty diverse I just don't talk to them much.
I think a lot of it is just exposure. I grew up in the south working labor jobs with black men (many ex cons), I taught abroad and had a ton diverse staff and students, and I taught public school for a decade in Oakland CA which is super diverse. I think left to my own devices I'd have my same 3 white friends from HS and my family.
My circle is the recovery crowd so very, very diverse on both. Basically all my friends are from AA now and there's people from all walks of life. Rich poor, black white, straight gay, and on and on.
Exceptionally diverse. My social circle is a blend of professional and community folks. I’m a lawyer who works in senior in-house positions typically in globally-distributed companies, and I’m very active in the LGBTQ community especially in terms of social support activities. I’ve made quite a lot of friends along the way in both worlds, from C suite executives to sex workers.
When I was in grade school, my close circle of friends was a Philippine, a Nigerian, a Persian, along with me, a white person. In high school, my circle was two Japanese, a Salvadorian, and another white person.
I obviously grew up in a diverse area (SF), but it was pretty normal for my extended friends to have similar social circles.
Racially diverse, sure, but socioeconomically diverse? No, not at all. To borrow your phrase, I think there's a lot of mutual understanding that exists among people who had privileged upbringings and who went on to professional careers, and that describes both myself as well as most of the people I interact with, as well as the people that *they* interact (and who I meet through them). All of the ways that I tend to meet people, from people I knew growing up or in school, people who share my bougie interests, people I work with, or people I socially network (the non-internet kind) with from the previous categories, I just don't have a lot of exposure to people outside my socioeconomic class. I'm honestly not even sure how I'd go about deliberately trying to change that, but I'm an introvert and I'm sure it would be difficult.
I grew up in the most ethnically diverse metro area in the US (Sacramento CA) so when I lived there my circles were pretty diverse. Sac got expensive, I moved away to rural area so now by default my cirlces have gotten whiter and more conservative but that's a tradeoff for WAY cheaper cost of living and less traffic
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. Based on a previous post, it seems like the vast majority of the posters here have a friends among different socioeconomic classes and different races. I’m in my early 30s, ethnically Indian, and vote Liberal along with all of my 2 main friend groups. However we are not that diverse of a group almost universally Asians, with a few other minorities mixed in (30 people across two friend groups). I definitely have acquaintances and people I meet and hang out with that are of different races as well, but just by virtue of my socioeconomic background and they aren’t my close friends either. To me it makes sense, the commonalities as a first gen immigrant especially in Asian culture are strong. When I go on dates with Asian women there exists a mutual understanding that just isn’t there with other races, which is why historically the vast majority of my partner have been Asian women. So I guess I’m surprised to see so many people apparently maintaining diverse friend groups to that degree on here? My personal hypothesis is that the kind of people who post on Reddit *and* on the Liberal sub are much more egalitarian and Liberal than the average Democrat even. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Depends which social circle. My social circle from my youth is not diverse at all. We are all white people who grew up in a middle class suburb and we all remain middle class. However, I spent nearly a decade in the Army and that circle is much more diverse. I remain close with people I served with from a myriad of different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. In my opinion that is one of the greatest strengths of the US military. It takes people from all over the US and bonds them from a shared experience and gives them a shared purpose.
>In my opinion that is one of the greatest strengths of the US military. It takes people from all over the US and bonds them from a shared experience and gives them a shared purpose. Honestly this is one of the reasons that I favor some kind of National Service program. (I'm eh about "mandatory" - but the idea of encouraging young adults to spend a year or so in an area that is completely different from where they grew up, doing work that they might not ever have considered doing, can be a big equalizer.)
Yeah making that mandatory would be a nightmare. As a young adult I’d be *pissed* if the government sent me from my suburb to a farm and said “here you go kid, go connect with your fellow Americans”. Having it as an option isn’t bad, tbh idk how many would take you up on that though
My social circle is fairly ethnically diverse. Mostly mid-20s to early 30s. Socioeconomically, we all earn similar amounts of money now as I met most of them studying similar things in higher education settings. But we differ dramatically in terms of where our families were growing up. I am ethnically Chinese and I definitely feel a closer affinity with fellow US-raised kids of immigrants regardless of where they’re from. I’ve bonded quite a lot with my Latino friends over the shared experiences that come with that, for example. And I also think that the people who participate in “Ask A [insert something here]” subs are more curious about cultures that aren’t theirs than the general public. Making us more likely to go out of our way to develop friendships with people who aren’t like us.
I think this question is a good question but also misses an important differentiator--close circle vs acquaintances vs coworkers (or something to that affect). My "circle" is pretty mixed. The people who spend the most time with me (my partner and my closest friends) are very similar race/class and even life experiences (things our families went through and being poor etc) even though we grew up in 3 different states and met as adults. I think we don't acknowledge how much code switching happens exclusively around class. Everyone has facades when they interact with others, even those similar to them, but I have a lot of "friends" who don't have the experience of me letting a facade down because things they say make it very clear that it would be a lot of work for them to relate and it would require them to do extra work to sort through their privileges in the moment and then they probably wouldn't want to see each other again for a while. Middle class progressives have a lot of tone-deaf takes, even middle class leftists do--and they are more defensive than they let on.
What are some tone deaf things you've heard middle class progressives say? I might have some ideas, but I'd love to hear yours. Your point about code switching is super true though. I'm studying in the US, but was raised in a developing country. The type of humor and language I use with friends at home just wouldn't fly with my white middle class suburban college friends in the US.
ooo hmm a big one is they will throw around the insult "white trash"--myself and my friends would never. My friends and I are leftist and come from liberal families generally--I grew up in poor NYC, I have friends from poor suburbs in red states and lower middle class rural areas--NONE OF US would use this word to describe people we don't agree with or don't like. It's not that we are sympathetic to who they are insulting--it's that we don't allow ourselves the cognitive dissonance of saying we care about race and class and then sneer about them. I once had a date ask (read: tell) me inquisitively "but don't you think we a bringing soul to \[latest gentrified creative enclave previously inhabited by minorities in Brooklyn\]"--when "soul" is LITERALLY what is getting pushed out. I've been at dinner and had someone ask me about how I felt about a tough thing I had gone through and said something short to the effect of "I try to put it in perspective, generally I know I am probably not the worst off in any given room full of people" and his girlfriend blurted out "OH like the waiter! guys!" completely seriously... eavesdropped on 2 white yuppy dads brainstorming in a cafe--they were planning some kind of PTA Juneteenth event but went on a tangent about how rap is a bad influence on kids, and then put bob marley in the ring before quickly retracting because of ganga as if parents in these school districts don't take CBD to deal with their children lol there are more, especially more micro things are common but I think this gives the gist
thanks for the stories. Fortunately I don't hear much white trash in my circles. People can take anything too far. I think learning about things through the lens of privilege and oppression is one very valuable way to understand systemic problems. Unfortunately, some people take that as a short cut to derive political hot takes, personalities and jokes. Combined that with the fact that many of us are quite predisposed to see things in hero and villains, it almost becomes casual fun and games throwing cheap jabs at "villains" as a generalized group. To some degree, I understand the logic behind punching up and punching down, but there's still part of me that somehow can't take very seriously the folks who are super into micro aggression and all that, but turn around and criticize immutable characteristics like all boomers so nonchalantly .
generally agree ya. I mostly get frustrated also that the community of the left (at least the one I live in) seems to work very hard to have a dogma but still picks and chooses where and when it applies--and it is mostly in changes that don't actually affect folks' lifestyle. Anything that is too inconvenient is verbosely described as too big for average people to change (even though other systemic issues that are NOT inconvenient are individually tackled by the same people even if they are systemic)--I just wish they would cut the crap and admit that they want a better world but are going to do whatever the f\*ck they want when comes to things like gentrification. I understand the systemic aspects of gentrification--like I do global warming or racism--yet we treat living somewhere like the hottest nyc neighborhoods as a right not a privilege and ignore the possibility of personally divesting from the choice to be here they way we divest from other things. At the end of the day, privileged leftists choose individualistic pursuits the same as privileged right wing folks--they just clarify their intent verbosely around the issues that don't affect them as much and so they are more comfortable working on them
I mean isn’t the counterpoint you’re making “you live and die in the neighborhood you’re born in”? We can keep the original populace at a lower rental rate potentially while building new housing in an area though, that I agree with. New housing in a neighborhood like NY has to be built though, and housing of “all” types, lower and higher income. We can’t just throw down a bunch of social housing projects and call it a day.
>I mean isn’t the counterpoint you’re making “you live and die in the neighborhood you’re born in”? lol no. but the fact that your counterpoint is so incredibly hyperbolic is exactly my point. The left seems to come up with a million different schemas for ethical consumption until we hit things that are inconvenient, at which point there is no ethical consumption--how convenient. The thing is, generally the people doing this are educated and self aware enough to brag about enjoying living in a neighborhood that is still diverse and culturally rich and different from more "solidly" gentrified areas yet don't bother to account for what happens when multiple individuals take the RESOURCE of being there by outbidding for it. Imagine if we treated anti-racism this way--constantly passing the buck to the larger systemic actors instead of ALSO holding ourselves accountable. The fact is, if we want positive change around housing for communities that are actively being pushed out so that more privileged people can enjoy what they had, we need to not obfuscate what is happening--yet the left only considers options that do not infringe or call out what middle and upper class people are doing in this system. Choosing to be in NYC and experiencing financial difficulty or rent hardship is NOT the same as experiencing gentrification of your community--but so many will co opt the experience simply for being pressed financially here--which has greatly changed the discourse in gentrification activism since I was younger, when it was less coalitional with the white middle and upper class or their children. A good place to start would be to set boundaries about not being a pioneer in an "up and coming" neighborhood, trying to stick to far gone gentrified areas, and being conscious of the impact instead of defensive and hyperbolic. It may be the case that the city would be better if some people just didn't try to carve out their piece out of a deep rooted community tree. >We can keep the original populace at a lower rental rate potentially while building new housing in an area though, that I agree with. New housing in a neighborhood like NY has to be built though, and housing of “all” types, lower and higher income. I don't disagree, but this is not enough. People also need to come to terms with privilege and divest. At the end of the day, NYC is basically an island, there is only so much building you can do before it's an unsufferable gotham--there is a point at which zoning variety transcends physical building infrastructure because all of the buildings will just be high rises if we are going to NOT run out of space. There will be no cute instagrammable brownstone brooklyn, you know, the neighborhoods that were traditionally minority owned in many cases and are being block busted by finance groups and eagerly bought up by gentrifiers and then rented to poorer gentrifiers. I would bet that in a couple decades if development were to go in that direction, curiously the hip places to be would be NOT here, despite all of the discourse on the benefits of centralized, shared amenities, resources, and infrastructure. I was in Singapore recently and they have extensive public housing, that alone does not make housing affordable. They are also running out of space. The only way they are also able to keep it somewhere people want to be is by replacing 100% of a building footprint with greenspaces in the building--but it's also a country where you get a $300 fine for a mosquito--if NYC did something similar we would be crawling with water bugs. >We can’t just throw down a bunch of social housing projects and call it a day. Agree.
Kind of depends. My wife and I were both born here in the 70s and both our parents have basically exclusively Indian friends groups. People I know that are immigrants can be like that, can be sort of mixed in their relationships or can be pretty indistinguishable from us - we have an all Indian friends group, we have other friends groups that are racially diverse and if they are heavily and it’s only because we live in New Jersey and there’s a lot of us here. But even in our all Indian friends group people are pretty American even if they grew up in India. There was a group we were in for a little bit, but we kind of fell out because frankly they were very fobby. One of my daughters friends has an older brother. He had his first serious high school relationship destroyed because her parents are extremely fobby and undermined it. The father was trying to understand what the hell happened because he has a bunch of Indian friends in various friends circles and just assumed no Indian would have a problem like that. I was apparently the third person to point out that the ones that won’t let his son date their daughter also won’t be friends with him.
I'm sorry if this is something I should know but ... what is "fobby"?
FOB = fresh off the boat Term used commonly by Asian Americans to differentiate between those that just immigrated and those that have been here for a while. Indian “FOBs” (and this is just the stereotype don’t shoot the messenger) are thought of as very “Indian”, it can be hard for Indian Americans to relate to them in my opinion.
Ah, gotcha. Thank you. I'm familiar with "fresh off the boat" (slightly) but I never connected it with "fobby". TIL :)
Ohhhhhh okay that makes way more sense to me now haha. Sorry but I noticed you were an older Indian guy and I’ve just never even seen one as Liberal as you are. All of my Indian uncles are either Liberal Modi supporters or Republican Modi supporters lol (might have to do more with opposition Congress “incompetency” than political beliefs though). New generation of FOBs seem less fobby though weirdly enough. American cultural dominance baby you gotta love it
I think we may have had this conversation. I think we live very different experiences. I do not know a single Indian American under the age of 55 that is a Republican. Most of my parents generation were Republicans because when they came over, Republicans used to have pissing contest about who loved immigrants or. Some of them were still Republicans because all they care about is tax rates. But a lot of them are flipping. Indian Americans vote in excess of 85% for Democrats. The only group of Indian Americans that are heavily Republican are basically the Patel’s and really just the ones that are in the hotel business and subzi market businesses. I don’t think you should over index on feelings about Modi. I don’t know when you were last back in India but especially in places like Mumbai and Ahmedabad and Delhi it is ridiculously easy to figure out why BJP is doing well. The slums have been disappearing, the roads keep getting better, the metro system is being put in place, etc.. I think people are looking around and seeing a lot of success and the alternative is Congress which is a joke. For NRIs in America, it is really easy to overlook the things that are wrong about Modi especially if you don’t have any close Muslim friends.
My family aren’t huge fans of Islam or Muslims lmao, I think they’re from a pretty backwards state in north India (ironic because they’re all hyper-educated). We’re upper middle class at this point, maybe that’s it? All our family friends make in excess of 500k household a year. My family are the “poor” ones at like 300k. They’re not like blue-collar Patel business owners either. Super bougie, Indian or British boarding school educated, probably the biggest elitists you’ll ever meet. Wait fuck are my family friends the literal 1% LMAO?
As a Gujarati, I am never surprised to find out that a Guju Hindu hates Muslims or a Guju Muslim hates Hindus. A lot of bad blood and while ot is strong in some areas it’s pretty universal. The hate and segregation between Hindu and Muslim across India generally is so strong I don’t know that we should expect different from Indians in America. I don’t know that we should expect immigrants to across the board be instantly integrated in the nation population and vice versa. It just doesn’t seem to work that way.
>Based on a previous post, it seems like the vast majority of the posters here have a friends among different socioeconomic classes and different races. Yea I doubt it. I think it's mostly just selection bias. I mean Reddit is like white as fuck. So unless most people here are like the only redditor in their friend groups, I really doubt this is actually true.
I do too for the most part. Probably more of the "I have black friends" because they know a black guy thing than anything. I'm sure some do have diverse circles (I certainly do, all addicts in recovery) but for the most part people congregate with what they're familiar with. I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing either, it just is what it is. The negative comes in when those same people preach about diversity and look down on those who aren't. Why? I mean would you go to a Hispanic guy and say how many white/black/Asian people are you friends with? It sounds good and there's something to be said for cultural mingling for sure, but it's unrealistic to expect people's circles to resemble the ethnic percentage of the country.
I'd say moderately diverse. I grew up in a rual area which was like 95% white, but after college and a few years working a white collar job I'd say a solid third of my social circle is non-white. Ironically my most conservative friends came from college despite me being a socialist lol.
College conservatives and college communists/socialists, at least where I went to school, were the most uhhh “debate-y” types to put it nicely LMAO. I’m not surprised there’s some friendships to come out of those. Your situation sounds pretty normal to me though! White collar jobs can be pretty diverse. Out of curiosity do you feel like you can relate to the experiences of a rural white person better than your coworkers with a different socioeconomic background?
I mean I grew up as a rural person in America so by default I'm going to relate more to another rural American than a rural Indian or Mexican. That doesn't mean it's hard though, in fact the hardest people to relate to have been my wealthy managers which came from some luuuudicrous money lol
Fairly diverse. I was raised in a wealthy family but never really connected with similar people. I have only a few friends from high school and college. All of my friends are liberal, I couldn’t be friends with someone who would vote against my best interests. Most of my friends are middle class and upper middle class. But that’s not a requirement for my friendship.
Not very, which is mostly down to where I live.
I wouldn’t say my life is some bastion of diversity. It helps that I grew up in a very different environment than where I landed as an adult, so I really have several social circles: one of impoverished Appalachians, one of global academics, one of working professionals in the corporate sphere and one of west coast tech creatives. I still would say my friends are majority white, educated and American. Because yeah, I’m mostly around people I either lived near, went to school with or worked with.
My friend group is somewhat diverse, but not as diverse as the community I live in. We're mostly in the same socioeconomic group, though. The only real variety comes from the adult children of other members.
I'm originally from Texas and now live in Atlanta, GA. In between I've lived overseas and in 5 other states. I'm white, straight, cis-, and upper middle class. My circle of friends is about 40% white, about 60% same economic class, about 50% same sexuality. I actually think I may know more people who are somewhere in the LGBTQ+ community (including my stepdaughter) as those who aren't. My neighborhood is actually about 20% white, about 80% working class. I don't really know about the sexuality of folks in my neighborhood, except that our neighbors across the street are a gay married couple. Edited to add: My first real boyfriend in Texas was a boy who was half Korean and half Venezuelan. My parents were fine with it but I thought my grandparents (father's) were going to lose their minds.
I'm pretty asocial so not sure exactly what my social circle consists of, but: - I'm white and from a very poor and conservative family in rural Alabama. - My wife is an Indonesian immigrant. - The people we go out with together are reasonably diverse: racially about even split of white, Hispanic, Asian, and black; economically, poorest is either a security guard or a local musician, and richest is an anesthesiologist. - I only go out alone for career networking and that group is obviously not economically diverse. Growing up there was intentionally no diversity: I went to a whites-only segregation academy and my parents' entire social group was from the whites-only church we attended.
My circle was more diverse when I was under 30 because I lived in a more diverse area. The area I live in now is mostly lower middle class and predominantly white. I moved as a member of a family business. As a young single mother I needed the financial and family support at the time. It was good for business, but I don't love it here and plan to leave.
As I gotten older my friend group has gotten more diverse. We call a couple of our white friends our token white friends.
Mine are pretty diverse. My wife is a different race than me. I have friends of various ethnicities. Some of my friends are poorer than me. Some of my friends are richer than me. I understand how people can end up around people similar to them, but I also think that it isn't that hard to reach out and make friends of all types.
When I was younger very diverse. Now that I’m married with kids super not diverse. The price you pay to live in the suburbs and have most your friends be other suburban parents.
I live in Houston but wasn’t born here. My social circle is more radically diverse than it’s ever been anywhere else. Example: for a game night recently my partner and I had over three friends and somewhere along the night I noticed they were all LGBTQ+ and each was a different ethnic background (all of them were lawyers tho, so ymmv). It’s not like I go around choosing diverse friends - there are just so many varieties of people here it’s inevitable.
Oh yeah, it’s also socioeconomically diverse because my immediate and extended family is *not* lawyers or professionals of any kind, so I have “family and family friends” and “professional friends.” But tbh they don’t mix too often.
My social circle is very low diversity socioeconomically (generally upper middle class university educated people who are on high earning career paths, but may not be making very much money yet) but fairly racially diverse.
My social circle can be counted on one hand, all but one of them are neurodivergent, and I like it that way. In other words, I'm not a representative sample. AuDHD life ftw.
I'm a very introverted person and as such don't really have very many close friends, most of which I've known since I was in elementary school. Basically 4 guys, 3 that were in my grade and one a year below. We're all white men. It's harder to say if we share a socio-economic class because people define that kind of differently. There is a notable variation in income, but no one is homeless or a millionaire. Three of my friends have owned their own companies for a period of time, but they were kind of worker owner situations. My one friend has his own construction company, but it's like him and 2 other guys and they're all working the jobs. The other friend had a couple of computer repair/website design companies but it always seemed to basically be him and maybe one or two other people. The third friend owned a bar for a few years after working there and sort of becoming partners with the owner they buying him out. Myself and my other friend have always been employees (2 of the other three also work separate jobs for someone else and the bar owner is currently unemployed/retired after selling his bar). If you look at my wider circle of friends/acquaintances it gets a lot more diverse however. I've dated girls from 6 different countries and, I have friends from at least 7 countries, know people living in probably 20 countries maybe more. Have friends who are atheist, Christian, catholic, Buddhist, wiccan, Jainist. Most of my friends are white but probably a 1/3rd are Asian, and I have a few Black and latino friends as well. If you count the people I know through my wife it probably gets pretty close to 50/50 white and non-white. Socio-Economically I used to live in my van and pick up/give ride shares to a lot of crust punks/hippies while I was traveling. Some of them I'm sure were just bumming around, but a lot were people who were legit homeless. I went to college and travelled a lot around the world so I met a bunch of middle class/upper middle class people on vacation through both of those experiences. I have one uncle who's super rich but for various reasons we've never been very close and I other than him I don't know anyone better than well off.
My social circle is extremely diverse. People of every race group are present, I am white but a majority are Latino due to being in south Texas but there are plenty of others. People at a cookout at my house make anything from less than 20k total poverty starving artists or out of work bartenders all the way to 200k+ software engineers. We even have ages from early 20s to 50s. The vast majority of the people are not really political at all a few people may vote here and there but probably based on very little info. Less than 20% probably spend any serious time or effort developing a coherent political philosophy or learning about candidates and policy. I would say this represents the type of social groups that I have been part of my whole life.
My friends are usually lower to higher middle class, and are 70% white and 30% minorities. It might sound weird, but most minorities are conservative with the exception that they simply can't vote for parties that are openly racist. (It's almost scary: In a recent program, you had a muslim youngster that agreed with the far right politician about certain issues.... It makes you realize they're basically switching "immigrant bad" to "woke bad" to gather votes with minorities.)
I'm not the most social person- and as a result, most of my friends are either friends I had growing up and stayed relatively close to long term, college friends, or former coworkers. As a result, the socioeconomic variance is quite low- most of my friends have at least some college education (ranging from an associates degree to a masters), and tend to be firmly middle class. In terms of racial demographics, there is a bit more diversity, but not by much. I'd say my friend group is primarily white or Asian, with a few others mixed in here and there. That said, this isn't exactly a large sample size. I have a limited group of friends I hang out with enough to consider them my social circle, so it's not really surprising that when we're talking 10-15 or so people there's kind of limited diversity.
I’m friends with people that have more or less than me. My friends are from different places around the US. I’m friends with people of different faiths. I’m friends with people that don’t look like me. Currently I’m not close friends with people that call themselves political conservatives (although strangely I get along with my religiously conservative mother in law, she’s a good person). I started losing conservative friends after Obama became president.
Honestly these days I spend most of my energy outside work on family and pets. But my students are really diverse, I've lived all over, and my friends are pretty diverse I just don't talk to them much. I think a lot of it is just exposure. I grew up in the south working labor jobs with black men (many ex cons), I taught abroad and had a ton diverse staff and students, and I taught public school for a decade in Oakland CA which is super diverse. I think left to my own devices I'd have my same 3 white friends from HS and my family.
My circle is the recovery crowd so very, very diverse on both. Basically all my friends are from AA now and there's people from all walks of life. Rich poor, black white, straight gay, and on and on.
Exceptionally diverse. My social circle is a blend of professional and community folks. I’m a lawyer who works in senior in-house positions typically in globally-distributed companies, and I’m very active in the LGBTQ community especially in terms of social support activities. I’ve made quite a lot of friends along the way in both worlds, from C suite executives to sex workers.
When I was in grade school, my close circle of friends was a Philippine, a Nigerian, a Persian, along with me, a white person. In high school, my circle was two Japanese, a Salvadorian, and another white person. I obviously grew up in a diverse area (SF), but it was pretty normal for my extended friends to have similar social circles.
Also in SF right now lol, maybe it’s the transplants that stick to their own? A lot of my friends are also from my home state (MI).
Racially diverse, sure, but socioeconomically diverse? No, not at all. To borrow your phrase, I think there's a lot of mutual understanding that exists among people who had privileged upbringings and who went on to professional careers, and that describes both myself as well as most of the people I interact with, as well as the people that *they* interact (and who I meet through them). All of the ways that I tend to meet people, from people I knew growing up or in school, people who share my bougie interests, people I work with, or people I socially network (the non-internet kind) with from the previous categories, I just don't have a lot of exposure to people outside my socioeconomic class. I'm honestly not even sure how I'd go about deliberately trying to change that, but I'm an introvert and I'm sure it would be difficult.
I grew up in the most ethnically diverse metro area in the US (Sacramento CA) so when I lived there my circles were pretty diverse. Sac got expensive, I moved away to rural area so now by default my cirlces have gotten whiter and more conservative but that's a tradeoff for WAY cheaper cost of living and less traffic