With hate crimes on the rise and social movements like Black Lives Matter bringing increased attention to the issue of police brutality, the American public continues to be divided by issues of race. How do adolescents and young adults form friendships and romantic relationships that bridge the racial divide? In The Company We Keep, sociologists Grace Kao, Kara Joyner, and Kelly Stamper Balistreri examine how race, gender, socioeconomic status, and other factors affect the formation of interracial friendships and romantic relationships among youth. They highlight two factors that increase the likelihood of interracial romantic relationships in young adulthood: attending a diverse school and having an interracial friendship or romance in adolescence.
Grace Kao is Chair and IBM Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of Education Studies. She is also Director of the Center for Empirical Research on Stratification and Inequality (CERSI). She is affiliated with the Ethnicity, Race, and Migration (ER&M) Program, the Center on Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM), and the MacMillan Center, all at Yale University. Currently, she is Vice President of the American Sociological Association.