The Friendship Gap

The Twin Cities has a split personality. On one hand it regularly tops the charts as the best place to live, the healthiest place in America and so on. But we are also number one in the nation when it comes to the academic achievement gap, the income gap, the employment gap, the health gap and other big gaps between white people and people of color. How can this be?

But there are several other gaps that get less attention. A few years ago PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute) studied the racial composition of social networks. They found that the average white person knows only one Black person, and that 82% of white people in the Midwest don’t know any Blacks or any people of color at all. Their networks are composed exclusively of white people. On the other hand, the average Black person knows eight whites, but no Asians. For the most part, we live in segregated communities.

PEW research cites similar results in a 2016 survey: 81% of White adults say that all or most of their close friends are white. For Black adults, 70% say that all or most of their close friends are black.

This points out that we have a communication gap, a socialization gap, and a friendship gap.

Could this lack of social integration be connected to the other racial gaps involving education and economic well-being? Of course it does.

Then, an important way to begin to narrow these gaps would be to start with the friendship gap. That’s why Synapse aims to have at least half of its Brain Trust members and audiences to be people of color. It is part of our message to encourage people at our events to do their part by making new friends at our events, and to make plans to get together. In our post-event survey, 88.5% said they made one or more friends at the party.

Of those who made friends. Nearly two-thirds said they made plans to get together sometime in the following weeks.

If we are truly interested in narrowing racial divisions, it is a good idea to get to know someone that will diversify your social network. You can learn about other people through books and movies, but nothing takes the place of shared experience.