There's been a lot of conversation lately about people of color dealing with "only one in the room" syndrome in the workplace. But in 2016, it's still remarkably easy to be the only person of color in any given social situation. My Code Switch teammate Gene Demby and I were talking about this yesterday. We've both been to parties in D.C., Philadelphia, LA ā all majority nonwhite cities ā where we at some point looked up and realized we were "the only one in the room." We live in Chocolate City, for goodness' sake! How are we ending up at all these potlucks with nary another person of color around?
Turns out, it's pretty easy. As the Washington Post's Christopher Ingraham put it, writing about a study on race and social circlesreleased last year, "the average black person's friend network is eight percent white, but the average white person's network is only one percent black. To put it another way: Blacks have ten times as many black friends as white friends. But white Americans have an astonishing 91 times as many white friends as black friends."
[For more of this story, written by Leah Donnella, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/co...nd-redlining-collide]
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