A new study by researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, has found that friendships across ethnic groups in urban middle schools help protect youths from feeling vulnerable, making them feel less lonely and at the same time safer.
From the press release:
Friendships matter throughout life, and in early adolescence they provide validation and emotional support.
Researchers looked at 536 Latino and 396 African American sixth graders from 66 classrooms in 10 urban American middle schools that varied in ethnic diversity and were in predominantly low-income neighborhoods. The students reported on the number of same- and cross-ethnic friends they had, how vulnerable they felt, the quality of their friendships, and their ethnic identity.
Cross-ethnicity friendships increased as the ethnic diversity of classrooms rose, the study found. Youths who reported these friendships felt less vulnerable—less lonely, less victimized by peers, and safer at school—according to the findings. Earlier work by the same researchers found that greater classroom diversity predicted less vulnerability, and the researchers suggest that this may be because diverse classrooms have both more ethnic groups and groups of about the same size, which means that no one ethnic group is numerically more powerful than any other group. The current findings suggest that cross-ethnic friendships might partly explain the link between diversity and vulnerability.
“Students benefit when they take advantage of opportunities for cross-ethnic contact in forming friendships,” explains Sandra Graham, professor of human development and psychology in the Department of Education at UCLA, who led the study. “The composition of classrooms can play a facilitative role.”
Graham and her colleagues suggest that, even in ethnically diverse schools, administrators and teachers need to be especially sensitive to how organizational and instructional practices, such as academic tracking, promote or inhibit opportunities for students from different ethnic groups to interact.
Abstract of the research:
To examine the unique functions of same- and cross-ethnic friendships, Latino (n = 536) and African American (n = 396) sixth-grade students (Mage = 11.5 years) were recruited from 66 classrooms in 10 middle schools that varied in ethnic diversity. Participants reported on the number of same- and cross-ethnic friends, perceived vulnerability, friendship quality, and the private regard dimension of ethnic identity. Whereas same-ethnic friendships were uniquely associated with stronger private regard, more ethnic diversity and cross-ethnic friendships were uniquely associated with less perceived vulnerability. Multilevel structural equation modeling tested whether cross-ethnic friendships mediated the diversity-vulnerability relation. Although cross-ethnic friendships did not significantly mediate this relation at the classroom level, these friendships predicted less vulnerability at the individual student level.