git ssb

title: "White People Proven Unfriendly" date: 2004-07-20 01:00 status: published description: > The latest findings of the Commision for Racial Equality

tags: news, BBC News

links:

• url: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3906193.stm
  title: "'Few black friends' for whites (BBC News)" rel: related type: text/html
• url: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2756993.stm
  title: "Census results (BBC News)" rel: related type: text/html
• url: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2756041.stm
  title: "Ethnic groups growing - census (BBC News)" rel: related type: text/html

<p>
Careful how you read <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3906193.stm" title="'Few black friends' for whites (BBC News)">this BBC News report</a>. Whoever wrote the title obviously didn't read the article. </p>
<p>
In reality it should probably be “Few white friends for ethnic minorities”. According to the article, <q>more than 90%</q> of whites have <q>no or few</q> friends who aren't white. </p>
<p>
I'm going to pick an arbitrary definition of <q>few</q> - let's say it means “three or under”; as another ballpark figure, let's assume about thirty friends each in total (seems ever so slightly exaggerative, but what the heck). </p>
<p>
This would mean that, for those people who are not in the 90%, i.e. those who don't have <q>few or no</q> non-white friends, more than 10% of their friends are non-white. If a person has fewer than 30 friends (I can't think of 30 people I'd count as <q>friends</q>) then <q>few</q> (up to 3) of them is an even larger proportion. </p>
<p>
One of the findings of the 2001 Census was that, according to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2756993.stm" title="Census results (BBC News)">the BBC</a>, 9% of Angles and Welshmen aren't white. Which means it's perfectly reasonable to have <q>few</q> - i.e. less than 10% (assuming my guesstimations are about right) - non-white friends. </p>
<p>
It's even more reasonable if you're only counting blacks - they make up <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2756041.stm" title="Ethnic groups growing - census (BBC News)">2.2% of Angles and Welshmen</a>. So if I have one black friend, and fewer than 45 friends in total, I have a disproportionately large number of black friends. </p>

<p>
<em>Disclaimer</em>: the above maths is probably invalid and rubbish. </p>

<p>
The more interesting part is that <q>nearly half</q> (let's call it half anyway) of non-white folk <q>say most of their friends are white</q>. Which means 50% of non-whites don't say most of their friends are white. Once again, 90% of people in England and Wales are white. That's most. <em>Statistically</em>, everyone <em>should</em> be saying that most of their friends are white. </p>
<p>
Of course, this shows that friendships aren't distributed the same way as the population. It seems that white people have a statistically probable number of non-white friends, while non-whites have an improbably high number of non-white friends. My theory would be that most immigrants would tend to socialise with other immigrants, and non-whites make up a larger proportion of immigrants than of the general population. </p>
<blockquote cite="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3906193.stm" title="From “'Few black friends' for whites” at BBC News">
<p>
The CRE's chairman, Trevor Phillips, said he had been surprised by the extent to which the majority community still did not really know minority communities. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
There isn't any real majority “community” - just the society of which minority communities are part. Maybe people of those communities generally have more friends (as they're part of a community) hence the disproportionately high non-white friend count among non-whites. </p>
<p>
Another suggestion might be that those communities are insular, but that's not borne out by the (alleged) fact that whites have a proportionate number of non-white friends. </p>
<p>
The definite (not a trace of doubt) conclusion which can be drawn from this, then, is that white people in England and Wales aren't as friendly as everyone else. </p>
<p>
So that headline should probably read either “Few black friends for whites; few black people around”, or “Few friends for whites”. </p>
<p>
If only we had more minorities. </p>