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"VERONICA CHAMBERS, author, journalist and novelist: Sandra, you were saying before we sat down that the first thing we needed to do was &amp;quot;define friendship.&amp;quot; Why? SANDRA GUZMAN, author, The Latina&amp;#x27;s Bible: Because &amp;quot;friendship&amp;quot; is thrown around a lot. In Latin culture, a true amiga is like your sister or your cousin--she&amp;#x27;s family. A couple of years ago, when I was asked to write an essay about friendship, I realized that I didn&amp;#x27;t have any true white friends. It motivated me to build relationships that I wouldn&amp;#x27;t have considered before. CHAMBERS: I&amp;#x27;d love to hear from the other panelists. Tell us about your friendships with women of different backgrounds. MALAIKA ADERO, senior editor and vice president, Atria Books/Simon &amp;amp; Schuster: Well, Amy [Fine Collins] and I have been friends since fourth grade. We went to a school where I was in the one percent who were black; Amy was in the one percent Jewish. I think that was part of our attraction to each other. But more important, there were things about our spirits and our energy that attracted each to the other. AMY FINE COLLINS, special correspondent, Vanity Fair: We lost touch for years after we went to college. It was after we both moved to New York that we met again, like we were destined to be friends for life. Malaika knows me in a way no one else does. ADERO: The bond was still so strong between us because we have a real spiritual connection. That is what&amp;#x27;s most important in any friendship. BETHANN HARDISON, activist and founder, Bethann Management: I have a person in my life, Bonnie Berman, who made me believe in myself and helped me start my business. She has blond hair and blue eyes, but I can talk to her about anything [Hardison is African American]. To me, that&amp;#x27;s a true friend--one who you can say anything to, no matter what color she is. CHELSEA PERETTI, comic: As a white girl who went to a primarily black junior high school, I totally tried to assimilate--if you saw my home videos from that time, when I used Let&amp;#x27;s Jam [a black-hair product], I&amp;#x27;d kill myself! It was my dream that someone would ask, &amp;quot;Are you mixed?&amp;quot; [Laughs.] For me, the evolution was to ultimately be more comfortable in my skin and not put on an act of any sort. But I&amp;#x27;m glad I went through that experience where I was a minority in that situation and I was awkward but testing friendships. AISHA TYLER, actress: I was the only black kid in my private school until I was 13. And I was the only poor kid, and I was also tall. I was pretty much a social pariah. So when I finally got to go to a public high school that was more diverse, I felt this sense of relief--it was nice not to feel so odd. I was like, &amp;quot;Look at all these different kinds of people.&amp;quot; Growing up having to accept being the different one made me realize that it was OK to make friends with people who were different. CARMEN VAN KERCKHOVE, founder and publisher, Racialicious.com: After I got the call about this panel, I really started thinking about my friends and realized that my circle is not as diverse as it could be. Most of my close, longtime friends are Chinese or of Chinese descent like I am. It wasn&amp;#x27;t until recently, when my own interest in race and social media [Facebook, MySpace, blogs, etc.] developed, that I formed very solid friendships with people of diverse backgrounds. CHAMBERS: So there&amp;#x27;s still a lack of integrated friendships for many women. What is it that&amp;#x27;s still preventing all of us from having meaningful relationships? GUZMAN: I think it&amp;#x27;s about not wanting to be outside of our comfort zones. I have a friend who said to me once, &amp;quot;After five o&amp;#x27;clock, I don&amp;#x27;t want to deal with white people. I don&amp;#x27;t want to explain what a tostone is or the difference between a taco and a burrito.&amp;quot; And what she meant was that at the end of a really tough workday, you don&amp;#x27;t want to have to explain who you are and where you come from. It&amp;#x27;s easier to be with people who already get you. EMILY BERNARD, associate professor of English and U.S. ethnic studies, University of Vermont: But does being in a homogeneous racial group really guarantee camaraderie? I have black friends who feel that a white person could never understand what it&amp;#x27;s like to be black, so they can&amp;#x27;t get close. But for me, being the same color has never guaranteed that someone will understand me. GUZMAN: I agree. I think it&amp;#x27;s lazy not to try and reach out. But I also get why some people feel that it will be a battle. I experienced a lot of racism when I was a kid. I was nine years old when my family moved from Puerto Rico to Jersey City. That&amp;#x27;s when I was called a spic for the first time. My experiences and the things I&amp;#x27;d heard in my neighborhood about white people made me distrust them for a really long time. I&amp;#x27;m still cautious because I don&amp;#x27;t want to get hurt. HARDISON: I don&amp;#x27;t think your friend is being lazy, she&amp;#x27;s just saying, &amp;quot;I need time to be with people who appreciate me for who I am.&amp;quot; There&amp;#x27;s nothing wrong with women of color demanding space for themselves. TYLER: Yes, you need people in your life who truly get you. I have a really good girlfriend who&amp;#x27;s Asian and also in entertainment, and we talk about how women of color are perceived in entertainment, and we don&amp;#x27;t have to explain ourselves to each other--we get it immediately. That&amp;#x27;s nice to have. But to me, it&amp;#x27;s not an examined life to just be around people that validate you. Having people in your life who push you outside of your comfort zone is one of the best parts of friendship. Learning about people who are different from you is what will get us outside of the conventional assumptions we have. CHAMBERS: There are already a lot of hands raised in the audience. So let&amp;#x27;s take a question now. AUDIENCE MEMBER TONYA LEWIS LEE, author and television producer: I agree that if we want to break these barriers as friends, as a society, then we need to start having these conversations. I have one white girlfriend in particular who, when I really get honest with her about the difficulties that I face being a black woman, doesn&amp;#x27;t want to hear it. It&amp;#x27;s happened to us time and again, and it came up during Hillary Clinton&amp;#x27;s campaign. If I said that [Clinton&amp;#x27;s] tactics during the [primaries] were offensive, she didn&amp;#x27;t want to hear it. It makes it difficult for me to have a real friendship with her. But then I have a Jewish friend who, if we don&amp;#x27;t agree, [we] just go at it. And I think we really break through. CHAMBERS: A lot of my white girlfriends felt that it was Hillary&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;turn&amp;quot; because it was time for a woman president. That was an issue I didn&amp;#x27;t want to touch with women I otherwise really care for, because it goes to the heart of a really deep issue of white women and entitlement. Panelists, how do you deal with tough conversations? PERETTI: It can be challenging to figure out how to react to someone who&amp;#x27;s sharing their pain with you if you don&amp;#x27;t identify. Should I try to filter my response through something I&amp;#x27;ve experienced or just say the politically correct thing? It&amp;#x27;s hard. ADERO: Well, the response to somebody else&amp;#x27;s story of pain is compassion. You can&amp;#x27;t have a healthy relationship, be it a friendship, a marriage or whatever, if you can&amp;#x27;t talk about who you really are. I need to be able to talk about who I am as an African American Southerner, and also acknowledge who you are. To me, that&amp;#x27;s real friendship. HARDISON: I don&amp;#x27;t think you have to talk about these issues [with all friends] just because you&amp;#x27;re different races. For that matter, you could be the same race as someone and they may not want to hear your problems if they&amp;#x27;re not that type of friend. It&amp;#x27;s like men: Some you can talk to, some you just want to have sex with and some you&amp;#x27;d never have sex with no matter how attractive they are. Some friends you can talk to, and with others, that&amp;#x27;s not their role. BERNARD: I have a white friend whose daughter is 10 years old, and we were comparing our palms. She noticed the dark etching in mine and asked why they were different from hers. Her father took her hand away because he thought for her to notice the difference was wrong, but she was just being curious. We live with this lie of the color-blind society being best and people saying, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t see race,&amp;quot; as though ignoring our differences is a good thing. I think that&amp;#x27;s a real flaw right now. FINE COLLINS: And that dad is just passing on his uneasiness to his child. That&amp;#x27;s what&amp;#x27;s missing from these relationships, comfort with each other. AUDIENCE MEMBER BEVY SMITH, contributing editor, Latina: My best friend is a white woman who worked in hip- hop, and she was always comfy in her skin. She never felt the need to &amp;quot;dress black&amp;quot; and all that nonsense. I like her because she&amp;#x27;s authentically herself. The way we bonded is because her dad&amp;#x27;s an architect, and I&amp;#x27;m a huge architecture buff. We bonded over Frank Lloyd Wright. It&amp;#x27;s important to relate as humans first. AUDIENCE MEMBER HARRIETTE COLE, author, columnist and creative director of Ebony: This conversation has talked a lot about women who have friends of other races, but we&amp;#x27;re in New York, which I think is very unusual in being this international melting pot. What about women who live in still rather homogenous areas? TYLER: When I first started doing comedy, I was traveling all over the country. I remember feeling anxiety about going to the Midwest and the South, because I thought I was going to be the only black person there. And I remember I was like, &amp;quot;Look at all the black people! There are so many black people everywhere! And Asian people! And Latinos!&amp;quot; This perception that all of the people of color are on the edges of the country is just not true. There are plenty of opportunities to meet someone of another culture. CHAMBERS: What should women who want to make friends with someone of a different race do? Is it weird to decide, &amp;quot;I want to have a white friend or a Latina friend&amp;quot;? BERNARD: Well, nobody wants to feel they&amp;#x27;re a check mark next to someone&amp;#x27;s to-do list. But I think we have to let our curiosity guide us. VAN KERCKHOVE: Right, I don&amp;#x27;t think you can just walk into a room and be like, &amp;quot;Oh, you, Chinese girl, let&amp;#x27;s go.&amp;quot; But you do have to be in places where you will meet people of other races. FINE COLLINS: Think about it the way a friend of mine explains why he&amp;#x27;s bisexual: &amp;quot;It doubles your opportunity!&amp;quot; It&amp;#x27;s the same thing: If you forget about race and open yourself up to the whole world, it quadruples your opportunity for friendship."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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