According to the Public Religion Research Institute, 75% of white people have no friends of color, a statistic I find both startling and consistent with my experience. Typically, building interracial friendships means that both parties need to put in work. Both need to step outside their respective comfort zones to learn and embrace a culture with which they may not be familiar. Ideally, that means my white girlfriends and I would spend equal time in each other’s worlds, acquainting ourselves with things like the other’s music, food, news and fashion.

But that’s rarely how it goes.

Mostly, it’s just me, meeting my white friends at white restaurants, discussing white TV shows on our group texts, and going to white book events in white parts of town. Rarely do they choose films like Ava Duvernay’s “Origin” or suggest going to a reading by a Black author like Ashley C. Ford. And as the Black, female TikTok creator @bannebean posted recently on this topic, “I’m getting tired of having to be in white spaces to maintain the friendship.”

Read the full article HERE.

Laura Cathcart Robbins is the bestselling author of the Atria/Simon & Schuster memoir “Stash, My Life in Hiding” and host of the popular podcast “The Only One in the Room.” She has written recent articles on the subjects of race, recovery and divorce. Find out more on her website, lauracathcartrobbins.com, or you can look for her on social media.