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Monday, July 19, 2004

I have no black friends 

&bull posted by Matt Wharton @ 11:41 AM  

Article in The Guardian this morning: 90% of whites have few or no black friends.

I've been pondering the implications of this particularly as I am one of those without any black friends. But why?

What was the purpose of the article was it to make us feel guilty for the lack of mixing with other races in this multicultural society? Should we go out and befriend the first black person we find?

In fact I have never ever had any black friends, but that's not to say that all my friends have been white. Looking back over my life I've had friends of many different races and nationality. The reason I've never had a black friend is down to statistics there has simply been very few black people that I've encountered in any way more than just in passing. The place where I grew up had very few people who were black in fact there were more Filipinos. Again when I went to university there were very few black people on my particular course and now in employment there are no black people employed by the company I work for.

Should I be worried by this? I don't know, I don't think that I should particularly as I've taken a very narrow view of what the headline meant. It says black but means ethnic minority and if we are talking about that then I've experienced a wide variety of multiculturalism in the various spheres of my life to date. I've not made a conscious choice to have no black friends it's just that the opportunity to has never arisen so far.


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