Devin Friedman wants white people and black people to be friends. Instead of lecturing from the soapbox, however, he leads by example and tries to make a new black friend of his own.
In an article in the November issue of GQ, the senior correspondent writes that he looked around at a cocktail party he and his wife were holding at his house and realized how white his life had become, so he placed an ad in Craigslist asking a black person to be his friend.
The 7,500 word story that ensued provoked a flurry of responses, many of them positive, though he did get a few knocks. How, for instance, could he support such blatant tokenism? He doesn’t, though he argues that it’s okay to count your black friends (”I couldn’t handle walking around knowing that I have the same number of black friends as George W. Bush,” he writes).
But Friedman would be the first to tell you the article’s not just about him trying to find a new pal with skin darker than his own. What is it, then?
- It’s a study of black-white race relations in America today.
- It’s a piece of quality journalism disguised as a mini-memoir cloaked in comedy.
- It’s a commentary on how we isolate ourselves as we get older and on how terribly awkward and difficult it can be to break into new social networks.
- It’s a direct call for people of different races to be friends.
- It’s very funny.
“I wanted it to be about something bigger,” Friedman says in a phone interview. “I didn’t want sort of a memoir-y thing. The whole idea of it, of putting the ad on Craigslist, or flyers, is patently ridiculous. The point of that was to be satirical, but the satire hopefully points out something serious, which is the sort of now-unspoken racial estrangement in America.”
Studies show that the country has been re-segregating since the civil rights fervor of the ’60s died down, Friedman points out in the article. Some people, black and white alike, seem to be okay with the trend, but it seems to trouble Friedman.
“It’s the era of racism without the actual racists—eight percent of white people say they would be ‘uncomfortable’ voting for a black man to be president; it’s the other 92 percent who say they’d vote for a black person, but as often as not aren’t actually friends with one, that I’m talking about,” he writes.
So Friedman goes on a series of “blind dates” with black men, complete with bro-hugs and misaligned handshakes, in an effort to make a connection. He’s not in it just for the article, he writes—he wants to get a real friend out of the project.
Along the way he pulls no punches, peppering the story with “lots of things people think but wouldn’t say out loud.”
A few gems from the piece:
“I have dinner parties where I serve Spanish rosé and this softer version of mozzarella that has a lovely, almost liquid center that you can only get at the Italian import store. I do yoga, and I get excited when it’s ramp season. Sometimes I’d really like to punch myself in the face.”
“He told me about his wife, Emily, and I tried to figure out whether or not she was white, because I felt like you can’t just ask.”
“White folks might wonder: Will they be angry at me? (No.) Is it okay if I ask to touch their hair? (No.) What should I do when it comes time to shake hands? (This is a serious fucking question and is harder than winning a game of rock-paper-scissors.)”
It’s no coincidence, either, that the article ran during a presidential race in which Americans have a chance to elect the first African-American to the White House, but Friedman says he’s had the idea for a long time. It just made editorial sense to do it now.
He doesn’t spend too much time on Barack Obama’s historic race for the presidency in the article, instead using it more as a stepping-off point to make general points about race and society (the article could have come out a year or five years ago, or even five years from now, based on its relevance alone). Friedman doesn’t discuss, for instance, the issue of voting for a candidate based on race just to secure the election of the first black president, but over the phone he’s game to delve deeper into such issues.
“I don’t t think it’s necessarily wrong or right,” he says. “It’s not how I would vote. But you can’t really reduce people’s reasons for voting to identity politics necessarily. Even people who won’t vote for Obama on race, if you break it down, it’s not even as much about race as it is fear and resentment. It’s a fear of the unknown, like he could do anything. But why do you think he’s capable of anything, that he’s a secret terrorist? It’s because for most people they might not know any black people. A fear of the total unknown causes real political psychosis in some ways.”
Needless to say, Friedman is not one of those who say we’re living in a post-racial country.
“The real question is whether being post-racial is desirable or not,” he says, adding that every culture has its benefits and that “any time you get post-cultural you lose some traditions,” which no one really wants to happen.
“I think it’s going to take a while before we don’t come into a situation with someone of the opposite race with certain preconceived ideas,” he continues. People just need to get outside their comfort zones a little.
“Personally I’m fan of affirmative action just because it mixes things up a little, but who knows? The real point of the story is not to say, ‘Here’s how to solve big racial problems.’ It’s to say, “By the way, even though no one’s talking about it as much, (racism) is just as bad as it was 20 or 30 years ago. It’s just that people don’t seem to care about it anymore. If Barack Obama weren’t running for president, no one would be talking about it.”
Still, Friedman says it’s not just about race.
“As you get older, most people’s lives homogenize. When you’re a kid, you have kids from all different places and economic situations around you, but as you get older you’re surrounded by people who make about the same money and who went to the same schools. It’s a recipe for becoming a dickhead.”
Tags: aging, Barack Obama, black, Devin Friedman, GQ, humor, post racial, racism, white