U.S. Racial Constructions in Adolescent Friendship Networks
Open Access
- Author:
- Inara Rodis, Paulina Dela
- Graduate Program:
- Sociology
- Degree:
- Master of Arts
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- June 07, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Diane Helen Felmlee, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Gary J Adler Jr., Committee Member
Steven Michael Gaddis Jr., Committee Member - Keywords:
- Race
Adolescents
Friendships
Social Networks - Abstract:
- By the 2040s the United States will no longer have a (white) racial majority. Despite the increasing presence of individuals of diverse backgrounds, numerical prevalence does not guarantee that individuals are actually interacting with persons of other races or ethnicities. To explain the growing incidence of ethnic mixing and its impact on ethnic discrimination, this project studies interracial and interethnic friendships, as well as intra-racial and intra-ethnic friendships. This study examines the patterns of intra-racial, interracial, intra-ethnic and interethnic adolescent friendships using data collected by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Drawing on emerging theories of fluid racial identification, contact theory, and social network methodology, I investigate how the social networks embedded in schools influence reported friendships. Consistent with previous literature, by utilizing exponential random graph modelling I find evidence of racial preference (homophily), where students are most likely to be friends with schoolmates of the same race beyond what we would expect by chance. When these friendships are examined further, the specific type of racial classification scheme becomes important. When taking into account the external appearance of one’s racial category (measured by the interviewer’s classification of respondents) interracial friendships become even more rare, as students are sometimes in interracial friendships by their own classification, but intra-racial friendships when using external classification. Therefore, even when inter-racial friendships form, they are likely to be racially-homophilous by external standards. These results suggest the importance of external cues and others’ appraisal in assessing intra-racial, interracial, intra-ethnic and interethnic friendships.