Multi-Cultural Friends: You Need Them

I met my now best friend in freshman year of high school. At first, we didn't hit it off. I thought she was cool, but we didn't really start talking until sophomore year. We have a lot of things in common. She likes Marvel, the same shows as me, playing on the Nintendo Switch, Roblox, dogs, going to the movies, drawing art, pizza, etc. By now, she's family. She's basically my sister. But we don't look alike, because I'm Black and she's Venezuelan.

It's not like I was racist or against Venezuelan people before, but I didn't know anything about their culture. There's nothing wrong with not knowing about different traditions, beliefs, and other aspects of someone's culture. But it is important to be curious about people other than the ones that look like you. That's how we grow as people and as a society. I knew the struggles that Hispanic people face (I am a Black woman in the U.S.A. after all) but I didn't know the specifics. My best friend has taught me so much about Venezuela that I didn't know. Things like how good Venezuelan people are at making arepas. Listen, I know you can get an arepa anywhere, but I've had arepas before. I didn't like them. That was before I had one of my best friend and her mom's arepas. A bit crunchy on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside. The dough is the best part. You'll want to eat them when they're hot, almost burning. The butter will melt the moment it touches the arepa. Sprinkle in some cheese and jelly and you have yourself the perfect meal. She also taught me about the beauty of Spanish music. I wasn't aware of Romeo Santos's game. Her family dynamic is beautiful. Her family are some of her biggest supporters. At every event, they're there, cheering and celebrating. Her mom loves me. If anything goes wrong and I can't contact my own family, I know she'll be open to help me. She takes care of me all the time. She's super fun, silly, and sweet. She even perfected how to tell me that I'm always welcome at her house in English. My best friend is also one of the nicest and most loyal people you'll ever meet. She's super supportive, but also honest when you need it. She'll lend you her shoulder to cry on more times than you can count. She has the silliest laugh and the strangest humor. She's oddly good at making memes, especially for her niche fandoms. She does stuff with you that she might not want to do just to make you smile. She gives such genuine hugs when she really gets to know you and she's seriously one of the smartest people you'll ever meet. Seriously, she once told me that she does math problems for fun. Because of her, I'm more open to learning about Venezuela than I was before. It's also because of her that I know about Venezuela's dictatorship and the struggles her family has faced. She's helped explain to me how hard it is to get citizenship in the United States, and the blatant racism Hispanic people face in America, especially now. When I see the injustices that have happened to immigrants in the United States recently, I get mad. Boiling rage mad. That's because I just can't see a reason why someone would look at my best friend, the sweetest and best friend in the entire world, and judge her based on where she's from.

That's why I think everyone should have a friend from another ethnicity. When you know someone from another ethnicity that you care for, you're much more likely to receive knowledge about other cultures with open arms, and in turn understand their suffering just a tad bit more.

This situation made me think about racists. Not the evil ones from the belly of Satan, but the uneducated ones in rural parts of the U.S.A. Maybe racists that are uneducated and have never met a person of color will care more if they had a good friend growing up.

Of course it is not any person of color's job to be friends with racists. That's just ignorant. It's not our job to educate someone or correct their stupidity. We shouldn't have to live as a representation of everyone else in our ethnicity. Our actions shouldn't be held responsible for how someone else views our entire community.

What I am saying is that by having friends of different ethnicities, we help hold each other accountable and unknowingly influence others.

Without my Venezuelan friend, I probably wouldn't have heard about the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes that happened in Venezuela on June 24th, 2026 until it was too late to donate. One of the reasons I made such an effort to donate all the essentials I didn't need was because I couldn't help but think what if my friend was hurt? What if her family–the same family that has supported me through my ups and downs and took care of me–was hurt? That would be heartbreaking.

So we should all make an effort to have a diverse friend group. It just might make us all more considerate of each other as a society.