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 (M_age = 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.

Figure 1.

The role of mutual friends in transitivity in social network structures. Nodes (i.e., endpoints) represent individuals in a social network. Solid arrows (edges) represent existing friendship nominations with the direction of the arrow representing the direction of the nomination. The dashed arrow represents a potential friendship nomination given to an individual who is indirectly connected by a mutual friend. In the right panel of three triangles, the shading of the nodes represents monoracial (white and black) and biracial (gray) individuals. The race of the mutual friend is from the perspective of node B who has a mutual friend A with potential cross-race friend C.