More Than Neighbors

How a decades-long effort to promote interracial friendship is playing out in one New York City suburb.

by

Magazine

South Orange and Maplewood, New Jersey, two neighboring suburbs about a half hour west of New York City by train, have capitalized on their reputation for being diverse and welcoming. The crosswalks in front of Maplewood’s town hall, a block from my house, have been painted in rainbow stripes to honor LGBTQ+ residents, the asphalt on a street connecting the two towns has proclaimed “Black Lives Matter,” and a quiet area is set aside during the annual Pride festival for neurodivergent people to decompress. If one were to poke fun at the place, they might point out that teachers refer to the “tug-of-peace” during an elementary school field day, because war is wrong and disturbing.

In 1996, in response to concerns about white flight and a perceived decline of the school district the towns share, the local governments created the South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race to bolster not just the towns’ demographic mix, but also to encourage and support meaningful integration. The coalition refined its vision statement in 2016, working to create a community where people of different backgrounds can “interact, form friendships, and participate fully” in the towns.

That sounds straightforward enough. But in the United States today, two-thirds of white people have no friends who are Black, Hispanic, or Asian, according to a 2022 study by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). As Natalie Jackson, PRRI’s research director at the time, observed, “If you wonder why we have groups in this country who just don’t understand each other, this is it. There’s no mixing.”

So, in my progressive northeastern community, how possible, practical, and even advisable is the promotion of boundary-busting friendships? Do residents go beyond slogans and get to know each other so well they can find the forks in each other’s kitchens?

Note: I am writing as a well-meaning white woman, which is often considered the most problematic kind. I learned much of what I know about race and ethnicity from friends of color. I think such connections are crucial, yet too often elusive.

With the recent removal of affirmative action and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, colleges and workplaces may become more segregated, worsening the nation’s current levels of social disconnection. But social scientists tell us people develop concern about racial inequity and become more open, curious, understanding, and empathetic if they nurture diverse friendships. Perhaps these two towns, known collectively by the acronym SOMA, could provide answers on how to do that.

“We sometimes call social integration the last bastion or barrier,” says Audrey Rowe, the coalition’s recently retired, long-time program director, as she and Executive Director Nancy Gagnier chatted with me recently at a local restaurant. “People seem to expect that they’ll form relationships at work or school, but when it comes to who you’re going to invite to your house for dinner, that gets really personal. People on both sides, of all races, are a little bit more resistant.”

Even in New Jersey, which ties New York as the sixth most diverse state, South Orange and Maplewood are rare in having such diversity. Their combined population of 44,168 is 54 percent white, 26 percent Black, 9 percent Hispanic, 6 percent two or more races, and 5 percent Asian. And SOMA is even more rare in consciously taking steps to promote meaningful interactions among residents.

“We are a community that has committed to progressive values of racial equity and integration for twenty-five-plus years in a sea of racially isolated communities,” Gagnier said in 2022.

Rowe, who is Black, organized the coalition’s small-group discussions, titled “Conversations on Race.”

The coalition also runs Integration through the Arts, a program in which local artists lead regular meetings, inviting residents to study opera, learn juggling, practice theatrical improv, or dance together.

“We can provide the opportunity to be in the room with someone you have a lot in common with, but you’d never know it because you may not ever meet,” says Rowe, who noted that members of a mural-painting class were still getting together a year later. “Things that are organized seem to be the things that ignite and sustain the relationship organically.”

She and Gagnier, who is white, developed a strong bond after Rowe helped Gagnier learn to lead the organization. “We were tied at the hip; we did everything together,” Gagnier says. Rowe compared their friendship to a marriage. “Without even going to her, I’d say, ‘What would Nancy do?’ ”

But while friendships like theirs are what their organization envisions, Rowe admitted that it can take her and her friends of color a lot of effort to live in a white-dominated world, and she craves relaxation in spaces where she doesn’t have to represent her race.

“If I’m exerting energy at work and school, when I come home I want to just be, with nothing to prove, no stereotypes I have to counter, no worrying what it means if I’m late to something,” she says. There are times, she concedes, when interacting with people who are very different “comes across as work.”

Some argue that the current dearth of interracial and interethnic friendships is a white-people problem, caused in part by self-segregation and reinforced by historically racist policies like redlining and the shutting out of people of color from the G.I. Bill and other opportunities for amassing generational wealth.

To learn more, I reached out to Rhea Mokund-Beck, who is deeply involved in local racial justice organizing. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, she had run a seminar led by women of color called “Allyship in the Racial Justice Movement.” Mokund-Beck, a former trustee of the coalition who describes herself as Black and mixed race, told the assembled white women that people of color can be wary of having white friends, because they tend to step on their toes, then ask why it hurts.

Mokund-Beck is also a co-moderator of a consciously inclusive 9,500-member Facebook group for local parents, where many interactions have racial undertones. Despite the frequent arguments she referees online, she thinks many of the women in town have cross-racial friendships that are quite intimate.

“It’s not just about reunions and parties and good times,” she says. “To be rich and real and lasting, [the friendships] have to be quilted together by transition and trouble and illness. For people who are in interracial relationships, that also means dealing with race. There’s no ignoring that.”

Janelle Gera and Kim Takács call each other best friends, and four years ago, when Takács had her second child, she asked Gera to be his godmother. The two met at a baby sign language class. Takács, a neurodiversity-affirming speech therapist, was teaching at Little Bee Learning Studio in Maplewood. Gera’s daughter, Theo, who doesn’t give away smiles easily, went over to Takács and plunked into her lap.

“Theo chose our friendship, I always say,” says Takács, who is white. Their bond grew via texts and voice messages during the pandemic.

Gera, who is Black, had signed up for all sorts of mom and baby activities, but she saw the white parents mostly sticking together, even at playdates billed as integrated.

“My impression was that white moms saw other white moms as a safe extension of their space, and I was less safe,” says Gera. “I was less familiar, and just different.”

The women say their friendship took root because, even though Takács came from what she calls a sheltered, private-school background, Gera is not her first Black friend.

“A lot of that work was done before me,” says Gera, who feels if people haven’t made diverse friends by their thirties, they have chosen to live in a kind of bubble. “I’m looking to talk to somebody who’s made different kinds of decisions.”

Takács has tried to educate herself by listening to audiobooks, following people she can learn from on social media, and joining a book club of white residents learning about white supremacy.

While Gera has had to explain to Takács some aspects of her experience as a Black person in the United States, “I don’t think there’s ever been a time it felt like I can’t have this conversation with Kim because she’s a white woman.”

And when their group chat, with three Black women and two white women, discusses racist incidents—like when a Black mom was mistaken for a nanny at school—Takács says she feels comfortable offering support, but not advice.

When the women get together with their husbands and children, “we speak of it as a chosen family,” Gera says.

Demographic trends suggest that younger white people are more likely than older ones to build friendships across racial and ethnic lines. The PRRI study showed that while about a quarter of white Americans aged sixty-five and older have friend groups with some racial or ethnic diversity, almost a third of those ages fifty to sixty-four do, as do 46 percent of white eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year-olds.

“One in two Zoomers is not white, and that has a really profound impact on their politics and outlook,” says Melissa Deckman, the chief executive officer of PRRI, in an interview.

Two graduates of SOMA’s Columbia High School say their friendship has given them insights they would not have had in segregated friend groups. Avi Ramer and Anthony Agu, both twenty-five, met in a math class where they were two tenth graders among a class of accelerated eighth graders.

In their conversations they noticed many ways they were treated differently. When each wanted to move to more demanding classes, school counselors encouraged Ramer, who is white, but made Agu, who is Black, prove himself first. At traffic stops, police were more likely to give Ramer a pass. When Ramer posted about such an incident on social media, Black friends left comments saying “MBN”—Must Be Nice to be treated so leniently.

Agu, a first-generation Nigerian American, has learned in his cross-racial relationships how to navigate uncomfortable situations, such as a friend’s grandfather or uncle coming off as a little standoffish or even racist.

“Being able to confront it head-on—the acknowledgement of the wrongdoings and taking the lessons from that situation—it’s not an easy thing to do,” he says.

The two friends had one of their longest conversations about race in 2020, after police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes.

Agu had always known that parts of the world didn’t accept people who look like him, but his social media feed left no doubt.

“It was a constant reminder, day after day, of a new killing and a new life lost,” he says. “I was forced to ask myself certain questions and understand certain realities of the world I’m living in. And it sucked.”

Ramer, Agu says, did “a great job” helping him to process the tragedy. “Obviously, I have Black friends, but it’s a different dynamic,” he says. He needed his Black friends to mourn with, and Ramer to vent at.

Ramer says the Floyd murder hit him very hard, having close friends of color: “If you’re only friends with one specific community, you’re never going to feel pain unless that community is affected.”

As in many suburbs, some of the most contentious conflicts in SOMA center around schools. The school district is trying, via an intentional integration initiative, to address racial segregation in the towns’ six elementary schools, where one was more than 70 percent students of color and two were almost 70 percent white. The district was also sued in federal court over discriminatory practices in class assignment methods and discipline policies.

“Right now there are still too many Black students who don’t get support . . . and don’t feel welcome in their [Advanced Placement] classes,” says T.J. Whitaker, who has taught Literature of the African Diaspora and AP African American Studies at Columbia High School. “Oftentimes after the first quarter, Black students or students of color will opt out, having a footprint on their back, almost like ‘you don’t belong here.’ ”

Whitaker, who is Black, sees friendships across race and ethnicity starting early in SOMA, some lasting through high school, even though the groupings of students in Columbia’s cafeteria look pretty homogeneous.

“At some point in middle school, if not early high school, those childhood relationships begin to either fracture or spread thin,” he says. “I think those who have the wherewithal to think differently through difficult concepts can see themselves through the racism, the white supremacy, the patriarchy. And if they don’t outright reject it, they question it as teenagers. But I think far too many drink the Kool-Aid.”

I wanted to hear from one of the founders of SOMA’s Community Coalition on Race, Robert Marchman, a former Wall Street executive who is Black. He remembers being steered to less prestigious parts of Maplewood by his first real estate agent in 1991, then overhearing one white man on the train tell another that he was selling his house because the community was in “an irreversible downward spiral” due to Black people moving in.

Over the years the coalition trained real estate agents on equitable practices, created an integrated choir for adults, and advertised in fourteen different Brooklyn, New York, newspapers, encouraging white families, artists, and others seeking an integrated community to move to town. The coalition also helped people open their homes to events and create neighborhood associations “so people not only lived on the same block, but engaged,” Marchman says.

“We focused on getting people together to meet, talk, dialogue, have candid conversations, to counter head-on the irrational fears people were having,” he says. “Those have been the building blocks.”

While there’s of course no central local database of friendships across demographic lines, Gagnier has seen such relationships become more prevalent among younger residents.

“They have much more integrated friendships than I’ve ever seen,” she says. “Their families are friends, their kids are friends, they vacation together, and they work on projects together in the community.”

After two decades of celebrating SOMA’s diversity and stopping white flight, the coalition in 2016 published a report on population trends suggesting it may have been almost too successful in its mission.

From 2000 to 2010, SOMA’s demographic mix was stable, and in the early 2010s, overall diversity and integration by neighborhood increased. But starting in 2007, the proportion of Black homebuyers started to decline. As average home values rose steeply—up 78 percent in South Orange to $1.1 million in the last eight years—more people moving into the towns were white, Hispanic, or Asian. Between 2010 and 2020, the towns lost 10 percent of their Black population.

While the coalition started off advertising the towns to white people to preserve SOMA’s diversity, it is now marketing the towns to Black and Hispanic potential residents, and offering $7,500 Wealth Gap Equalizer Loans for families of color who are first-time home buyers.

Mokund-Beck worries that as wealthier white families buy into formerly affordable neighborhoods, the towns’ devotion to diversity may fade.

“I think we’re in that swing away from our reckoning with race,” Mokund-Beck says. “I think for the most part, white America thinks it’s done that already, and there are more pressing things to be reckoned with now.”

“Maybe we outlasted our time here in SOMA,” she says. “The SOMA we bought into is harder and harder to find.”

This article was supported by a fellowship from New America.