How much % friends = to your race?

Only about five percent of my friends are in the same ethnic or racial group as me. My closest
best friend is Chinese and my two other best friends are Mexican. I think there are a lot of
factors that play into this result of friendship. After going over the provided notes, it seems that
two ways to possibly explain my methods of choosing friends are the interactional theory and
the social distance. Under interactional theory, environmental contexts are associated as the
motivation for social cognition (Parrillo 4). This makes sense to me because two of my best
friends shared my interest in pursuing a degree in the medical field all through high school. We
met at a health organization and most of our interactions happened in the hospital where we
all volunteered; our environment made us social and aware of one another. Also, social
distance or the idea that we are more attracted to strangers like us, is how I gained friends
within the same race and ethnic background as me (Parrillo 26). I feel as though the whole basis
of some of my relationships and how they came about must do with the fact that we shared an
ethnicity and knew we would have similar values and would understand one another if we were
to build a friendship.

I thought it was really interesting how my situation is almost the exact opposite of yours. I am
African American and less than 15% of my friends are the same race or ethnicity as me.
However, although most of my friends are different races/ethnicities I feel as though I can
relate better to the friends in the same race/ethnicity as me. For that reason, I feel like it is nice
to be friends with people of different race/ethnicities because of their differences. I do not
want to be friends with the same type of person. A nice mix of backgrounds makes the
friendships more unique.