Meeting in the Middle: The Role of Mutual Biracial Friends in Cross‐Race Friendships

Abstract

Social network analysis was used to examine the role of having a mutual biracial friend on cross‐race friendship nominations among monoracial sixth‐grade students (Mage = 10.56 years) in two racially diverse middle schools (n = 385; n = 351). Monoracial youth were most likely to choose same‐race peers as friends but more likely to choose biracial than different‐race peers as friends, suggesting that racial homophily may operate in an incremental way to influence friendships. Monoracial different‐race youth were also more likely to be friends if they had a mutual biracial friend. The findings shed light on the unique role that biracial youth play in diverse friendship networks. Implications for including biracial youth in studies of cross‐race friendship are discussed.

Why Developmental Researchers Should Care About Biracial, Multiracial, and Multiethnic Youth

“…However, it is not clear which peers should be considered homophilous for multiracial youth (e.g., multiracial youth in general, multiracial youth who reflect an exact match of backgrounds, or monoracial youth who reflect one component of their background). Studies of peers have considered multiracial youth in different ways (e.g., Brown, Herman, Hamm, & Heck, 2008;Doyle & Kao, 2007;Echols & Graham, 2018).…”

“…Openness may also shed light on research findings that multiracial youth serve as bridges (i.e., individuals who are simultaneous members of multiple cliques and connect the cliques to one another) between cross‐group members within peer networks (Echols & Graham, ; Quillian & Redd, ). In a study that used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Quillian & Redd, ), multiracial youth with Black backgrounds were more likely to serve as bridges between peers from different monoracial backgrounds than their monoracial Black and monoracial White counterparts, even after controlling for school‐level diversity.…”

Multidimensional similarity in multiplex networks: friendships between same- and cross-gender bullies and same- and cross-gender victims

“…Homophily can be imposed by social structure, but an important source of homophily is also a preference to befriend similar peers (Kandel, 1978;Lazarsfeld & Merton, 1954;McPherson et al, 2001). Homophily preferences occur on several dimensions, including gender (Dijkstra et al, 2007;Mehta & Strough, 2009), ethnicity (Echols & Graham, 2018;Fortuin et al, 2014;Jugert et al, 2018;Moody, 2001;Quillian & Campbell, 2003;Rivas-Drake et al, 2017;Smith et al, 2014;Stark & Flache, 2012;Wittek et al, 2020), academic achievement (Flashman, 2012;Gremmen et al, 2017;Kretschmer et al, 2018), or music taste (Franken et al, 2017). In addition, recent research has found homophily mechanisms based on the position of individuals in the network; children with a structurally equivalent position in the network (e.g., friends of the same classmates or bullies of the same victims) are more likely to have a positive relationship (Echols & Graham, 2018;.…”

Conceptualizing and Measuring Biracial/Multiracial/Multiethnic Status: Friendship Homophily in Early Adolescence

“…One of the methodological challenges that we face in our own work on adolescents' peer relationships is what constitutes homophilous (i.e., sharing their racial/ethnic background) and cross-group friendships for Multiracial youth (see also Doyle & Kao, 2007;Echols & Graham, 2020). Homophily has long been noted as a key feature of adolescent friendships and friendship stability (e.g., Kandel, 1978), whereas cross-ethnic friendships have been found to be less stable than same-ethnic friendships (Jugert et al, 2013).…”