Is it normal to live in London for 60 years and not more than 2 non-white friends?

[MareofBeasttown]

I am Indian and new to the UK. I was reading Lucy Kellaway's new book Reeducated, and mostly enjoying it ( am a fan of her work). But then rather thrown by this paragraph where she says she has lived in London all her life but never had more than 2 or 3 non-white, non Oxbridge friends! Find this incredibly strange, especially as I have only been here a year and already have friends of all races ( perhaps because I have been actively looking and can't think of anything more boring than sticking with your own race). I do find that well-intentioned people are constantly recommending Indian things and Indian clubs to me. I didn't come here to stick with my 'tribe' though.

I don’t know about London but I’d say it’s standard in the majority of the rest of the country. I am mixed race and I think I’ve had only had one non-white friend in my whole life.

Most other parts of the country are over 90% white, so that’s not strange.

In London, where a third of people are not white, and where that has been the case for at least the 20 years I’ve lived here, it’s very strange.

I’m not saying Kellaway is a racist, but her decision to pursue and maintain friendships only with posh white people is deliberate, not incidental. She may not even have been conscious of it, but nonetheless it will have biased her against non-white colleagues, and I’m intrigued how she’s now dealing with her non-white students.

I'd say my friendship group from school is quite diverse (went to a Catholic school, so ethnically diverse), but my close friends from uni are all white, DHs are more diverse.

Almost everyone at work is white but that's because we spend a lot of time calling Europe so there's lots of fellow Italians, some French people, some German people etc.

DS1 at a diverse primary school (picked specifically as he is mixed race) and all the mums chat to each other at pick up and contribute to the whatsapp group. I don't know about playdates as it's been Covid plus he goes to after-school club most days.

I live in a very diverse city. My DS's schools have been predominantly non-white. His school friends are predominantly non-white.

But personally I think all my friends are white. I have non-white colleagues and acquaintances but no close friends. Purely because my shared experiences are generally with white people.

@crapbuttrue What would you say those shared experiences are?

I had an expat childhood and my shared experiences don’t really start until university.

This is a really interesting discussion and I’ll be sad to see it go the way of other race threads. I have read about unconscious bias and here it is, in Lucy Kellaway, who otherwise seems to be a good person.

I grew up in London in a very Jewish area (I'm not Jewish). At my school there were lots of Jews but hardly any black or Asian girls. Then I went to Oxbridge and again it was mainly white. My kids go to school outside London and have experienced a lot more racial diversity. London as a whole is diverse, but some pockets of it aren't particularly.

@drainrat

I’m not saying Kellaway is a racist, but her decision to pursue and maintain friendships only with posh white people is deliberate, not incidental. She may not even have been conscious of it, but nonetheless it will have biased her against non-white colleagues, and I’m intrigued how she’s now dealing with her non-white students.

While I can't wholly endorse your potted history of the insecurities bred into the British class system, drainrat, I completely agree that her journalism and her teaching must have involved a terrifying amount of exclusion of consideration of people outside her own 'type'.

Decades ago I found myself spending weekends and vacations hanging out with the Oxfam set (who all seemed to reside in manor houses scattered around the Oxfordshire countryside.) They were fawningly keen to cosy up to visiting foreign black people - but utterly despised those who were British born.

Of course, now, people like that are enthusiastically over-compensating. Black people (probably including her pupils) who can't avoid them are relentlessly pursued and urged to "tell your story". And are too polite to tell them to fuck off.

@drainrat You and I have a very similar background. I have been an expat all my life and DH works for an MNC, so I have lived all over and have had friends of various races. I am not trying to sound pious or better than anyone else; just saying that this colours my view. My mother was an expat in the 70s; she definitely only hung out with other Indians, but times have changed:) I think you will find Kellaway's book very interesting.

I am in SE London and it has been very welcoming of me. I feel like I have plenty of shared experiences with all races ( we all seem to be watching the same shows on Netflix and reading the same books). But I am sure I have my share of unconscious bias too.

I think it’s mostly her age. At the time she joined JPM and the FT her peer group would have been almost exclusively white, as she says, and those are naturally the people she forms the closest friendship bonds with. By the time she left the FT I’m sure there were a whole host of bright young things from an enormous range of backgrounds but they’d be in their twenties and thirties, and while I’m sure she got on well with them, they wouldn’t become lifelong friends in the same way that her peer group might.

I’m ten years younger and from a not dissimilar background (private school, Oxbridge, the City) and I have worked closely with a load of people from every background that you can think of, and made pretty good friends with many non-white colleagues but my own generation is white and my non-white colleagues have been ten or more years younger than me. Ten years is a small enough gap that I’d still feel comfortable hanging out with people. But twenty years…that’s much more of a stretch.

However, as she says herself - it also says some more challenging things about herself and the way our society functions. I found myself at my DCs’ inner London primary mostly hanging out with other middle class white mums (none of them became BFFs either). It’s a thing, and the fact that it’s natural doesn’t make it fine, but what you’d do to change it is beyond me.

I’m closer to your age than hers, but my friendships when I lived in London looked much like that. I moved there after doing a Masters (everyone in the course was white) worked in journalism, and on the 3 magazines that I work at across 12 years, there were two Black women. One much older and too glamorous to talk to me, one who was in my gang. Everyone else was white. I only made work friends the whole time I lived in London, never met anyone in another way.

Now I live elsewhere, and have kids who have a much more diverse group of friends, and I do too.

It’s worth remembering that you don’t live ‘in London’, you live in Muswell Hill/Hackney/Greenwich/wherever. Depending on where you live, the mix may be more like a small town in the Cotswolds than an ethnically diverse city.

I found myself at my DCs’ inner London primary mostly hanging out with other middle class white mums (none of them became BFFs either). It’s a thing, and the fact that it’s natural doesn’t make it fine, but what you’d do to change it is beyond me.

Now that I think about it, my "mum friend" group is neither all white nor all middle class, but in all honesty, the class thing is the bigger barrier. The mums in the group who aren't middle class are all white, and the mums who aren't middle class are my less good friends. I was briefly befriended by an Iranian SAHM at the school gate and we chatted some; she was clearly lonely, but in all honesty English was a strain for her and that made conversation a bit exhausting.

I genuinely have to rack my brain to think who the Black or brown people in my social circle are, not because they don't exist but because I don't store that as a salient characteristic in my head. Also, just to be very clear, I'm well aware that that is a privilege accorded to me by being white, and my Black friends never get to "forget" that they're Black.

I grew up in london, the area I grew up in was diverse in religion but probably 98% white. So I could see it from that, at that time (80’s/90’s) there seemed a very segregated london, with that bit mostly white british, that bit Jewish, that bit mostly chinese, that bit mostly Nigerian, etc etc.

Also, Kellaway is significantly older than me, and that may well have an effect. I've had multiple wrangles with my mum where she meets a friend of mine and clocks from their accent or skin tone that they might not be white British, and she asks where they're from, and I give her a blank look and say that they live in Crouch End, and she'll say "but where are they, you know, from?", and I'll get annoyed and say they're British and beyond that I never asked, and she will declare that asking people where they're really from is "just taking an interest" and I am seriously socially deficient for not doing it.

@BuffySummersReportingforSanity

I found myself at my DCs’ inner London primary mostly hanging out with other middle class white mums (none of them became BFFs either). It’s a thing, and the fact that it’s natural doesn’t make it fine, but what you’d do to change it is beyond me.

Now that I think about it, my "mum friend" group is neither all white nor all middle class, but in all honesty, the class thing is the bigger barrier. The mums in the group who aren't middle class are all white, and the mums who aren't middle class are my less good friends. I was briefly befriended by an Iranian SAHM at the school gate and we chatted some; she was clearly lonely, but in all honesty English was a strain for her and that made conversation a bit exhausting.

I genuinely have to rack my brain to think who the Black or brown people in my social circle are, not because they don't exist but because I don't store that as a salient characteristic in my head. Also, just to be very clear, I'm well aware that that is a privilege accorded to me by being white, and my Black friends never get to "forget" that they're Black.

I can quite see that this is the case and perhaps it is not wrong? Now that my DC are almost grown, I have fewer mom friends and actively seek out people who do not talk about children. I am keen on talking about other interests: reading, local history, music, theatre, professional stuff and so on.

@MareofBeasttown My mother too. Conversation in your second language is exhausting I guess. Ours was the pharma company beginning with R!

Despite being here 20+ years including school I have quite an accented English and agree with the poster above that there is different treatment of British Indians. My DH is very at ease in our social environment, but he’s very uneasy about expressing his Indian culture.

The immigration and integration experience of Black peoples in Britain is different again. Most Asians here are on professional visas and that creates a social divide between them and people with post-colonial nationality rights.

Any number of threads on here about having no friends whatsoever. So two friends of any description would be good going for lots of people.

@drainrat Same school (primary & high school), college, university. Growing up in a town in the north, similar family structure. Work.

Same with dating. I'm attracted to people who have a similar background/upbringing, someone with whom I gave things in common with. It's not that I don't fancy non-white males but I haven't met any that gave that shared experience with. I don't doubt that there ate done but I've never met any.

@BuffySummersReportingforSanity

Also, Kellaway is significantly older than me, and that may well have an effect. I've had multiple wrangles with my mum where she meets a friend of mine and clocks from their accent or skin tone that they might not be white British, and she asks where they're from, and I give her a blank look and say that they live in Crouch End, and she'll say "but where are they, you know, from?", and I'll get annoyed and say they're British and beyond that I never asked, and she will declare that asking people where they're really from is "just taking an interest" and I am seriously socially deficient for not doing it.

But I'm with your mum here. What she's really asking is what's their heritage, what's their culture. There isn't an issue in wanting to know that. Once you know someone is Scottish or Welsh for example it sets them in a cultural background that is an important part (usually) of their identity.

What was the context? What s strange thing to write.

I'm nearly 50 and I think it would be pretty hard even if you lived in X area and went to private schools Oxbridge and straight to fancy graduate career and jobs...

The friends bit is interesting. Not not met, not worked with, not been at school with. But not friends with.

Must have been exclusively mixing in very small circles.

I imagine she's also never been friends with someone who had an ordinary job of any type as well.

I mean the private schools here have had kids from loads of different backgrounds for yonks. All you need is money.

I also think it's an odd thing to count somehow.

I'm no 'i don't see colour' but I've always had a fair few friends and it's changed over the years. Never is s bit strange.

Not representative at all at least where I am.

Nearly 50.
RC primary. (If she's counting then what does she mean by non white? Loads of 2nd gen Italian/ Irish children whose parents faced issues back in the day etc).

Private secondary selective etc. It was maybe 50% Jewish 30% Asian backgrounds. Again. Jewish people get s lot of shit esp round here. Security common at synagogues for maybe 15/ 20 years now.

At 6th form kids from a closed Christian community. Not allowed to watch TV or read newspapers. Think Amish but without the dress code.

I suppose my point is there's all sorts of interesting people out there.

I would guess she's not got to know anyone who isn't just like her.

And that's fucking weird tbh and must have taken some effort (unconsciously I'd imagine).

What s narrow boring way to live.

'Most Asians here are on professional visas and that creates a social divide between them and people with post-colonial nationality rights.'

Here in London? In the UK???

Are you entirely serious?

I’ve just realised I have no south Asian friends I’ve never thought about this before. I’m mixed white English/south Asian but all SA I mix with are family (technically some are not but considered family they are not people I’ve met they were just there)

I have a mixed friendship group. Thinking about it some of my friends don’t really and some not at all. I think it’s just circles they have mixed in through work/school maybe not I’m not sure

I do know people who are very self conscious around non white people worried about saying the wrong thing which I find a bit strange living in London.

there are bubbles in London people might witter on about their love of diversity in London but their love for diversity is superficial (they can eat any cuisine or go ethnic shops to buy spices ethnics would use)

It's too early in the morning for this, but I feel the need to point out that every human being has an 'ethnicity' ...

Was that to my post Edmontine

I was mimicking what I have heard from mostly white mc who don’t want to offend but that’s as far as their live for diversity goes