Why Don't Black People Have Any Asian Friends?

An opportunity to be more intentional during AAPI Heritage Month

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In 2013, a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) determined that in a 100-friend scenario, Black people had exactly zero friends of Asian descent.

PRRI followed that survey up in 2022. Nearly 10 years later the statistics showed that Black friendship networks had improved—one percent of our friends were of Asian descent.

From the report…

Across racial groups, Americans’ core social networks tend to be dominated by people of the same race or ethnic background. Among white Americans, 90% of people comprising their social networks are also white, similar to 2013 (91%). Among Black Americans, 78% of people in their social networks are also Black, a notable decrease from 83% in 2013. Among Hispanic Americans, 63% of the people who comprise their core social networks are also Hispanic, while about one in four (26%) are white, similar to 2013 (64% and 19%, respectively). Among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI), 65% of the people who comprise their core social networks are also AAPI, while over one in five (22%) are white and 13% are another race.

While most racial groups can stand to diversify their friend networks, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month is a timely opportunity to assess why Black people have so few AAPI friends.

Part of it is just numbers. Black people comprise about 14 percent of the population and Asians are about 6 percent of the population.

Here it is critical to note that “Asian” is a broad and imprecise category. That five letter word includes millions of people in the United States who come from China, India, the Philippines, Japan, Korea, indigenous Hawaii and many more.

The terms Asian, Asian American, or AAPI here are used simply for brevity, not to lump magnificently varied people groups under a single name.

Given the relatively small populations of both Black Americans and Asian Americans, it is harder for us to have meaningful contact or friendships. There simply aren’t enough of us.

Geography plays a role as well. To this day, many Black Americans live in the southeastern part of the United States—the land of our ancestors’ enslavement. Meanwhile large populations of Asian Americans are concentrated on the west coast and urban centers in the northeast.

Black people and Asian people do not generally live near each other, so that makes it difficult to form friendships.

Chart from PRRI’s 2013 study

Racial prejudice between Black people and Asian people in the United States is also at play.

In one notorious example, a fifteen-year-old Black girl, Latasha Harlins, was shot and killed in Los Angeles in 1991 by a Korean store clerk.

Harlins entered a convenience store and put a bottle of orange juice in her backpack. The store clerk thought Harlins was about to steal the juice. She didn’t notice the cash Harlins had in her hand that she was going to use to pay for the drink.

The clerk confronted Harlins and the altercation got physical. When Harlins pulled away and began walking out of the store, the clerk took out a pistol and shot her in the back of the head from about three feet away.

Many people in the community were outraged, and the incident led to heightened racial tension between Black people and Koreans.

The next year, in 1992, during the uprisings in L.A. over the Rodney King verdict, a group of young Black men dragged a man named Choi Sai-Choi, a Chinese immigrant, from his car and severely beat him just because he looked Asian.

Population numbers, geography, racial prejudice all have left Black people and Asian people in an unhealthy separation that impoverishes everyone.

Even as much as I study racial justice, I still know so little about Asian Americans from various nations and with countless stories.

I was reminded of how much I still have to learn when I recently visited the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle.

I had never heard of Wing Luke before then, but he and his family immigrated from China to the U.S. when he was six. He served with distinction in World War II. And he became the first person of color elected to the Seattle City Council and the first Asian American elected to public office in the Northwest.

He worked for diversity, equity, and inclusion long before it was popular or had an easy shorthand (DEI).

“Preserving the ties and institutions that are part of our cultural heritage is not inconsistent with integration and one’s duty as a good American citizen. In fact, the essential vitality of the American life is that it is constantly enriched by heterogeneous cultures. This fact is recognized in the freedoms protected under the Bill of Rights.”Wing Luke, August 17, 1960

Photo of Wing Luke

Fortunately, I have taken notice ever since I learned of the startling statistics about Black people not having any Asian friends.

I’ve tried to be intentional, and I am thankful that today I count many people of Asian descent as colleagues, associates and, I hope, friends.

How many other stories have we missed? And how much collective power are Black and Asian people losing because we have not come together in solidarity more often?

Citing the demographics of our friend networks is certainly not about trying to be friends with someone solely because of their racial or ethnic identity.

People are not Pokémon cards. We do not collect them to fill the demographic gaps in our social life.

Instead, we approach others with humility knowing that their experience of the world holds treasures of wisdom and convinced that their absence, and their presence, matter to us and the world.

Diversity is a marvelous treasure, but it is one we have to seek and find. If you wait for your social networks to naturally expand then, in the most depressing way, your world will end up being a small one after all.

Are you satisfied with the diversity of your friendship network? What are you doing or will you do to foster racial and ethnic diversity, especially during AAPI Heritage Month? Comment below.

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