I spent a weekend with 15 straight white men (and it was great)

I pull up to our holiday house and one of the guys comes out to tell us where we can park. He’s tall, hazel eyes and brown hair, and isn’t wearing any shoes. He’s very white. I walk into the house and see another eight or so white guys sitting around, and a very slight nervousness comes over me.

Am I the only non-white guy here?

Many of us have had that sort of experience, where we walk into a space and realise fairly quickly that we’re the only person of colour. Or not even just race - I’m sure everyone has experienced this sense of insecurity, or feeling like you don’t quite belong when you enter a particular space - it’s a universal experience. And we might get a bit anxious, or feel a bit on edge; which of these people are going to be my people? Am I going to be accepted?

And yet, I still ended up on a weekend away with 15 straight white men, 12 of whom I had never met before. And guess what? I had an amazing time.

I should start by saying that I didn’t really know what (or who) to expect out of this weekend - One of my friends invited me saying it would be with “ambitious and open-minded guys” (I promise it’s not pretentious in context) but didn’t give much details on who they were, or what we would be doing. Call it holiday withdrawals because of COVID-19, call it looking forward to socialising with a different group of people, but I, without hesitation, said ‘yes’. Even though I had a suspicion most people would be straight white men, I also had a sense that these friends of the guy who invited me would be people I would get along with.

But growing up as a ‘minority’, we often find ourselves in situations where we’re somehow ‘othered’. Andrew Okolie states, “Social identities are relational; groups typically define themselves in relation to others. This is because identity has little meaning without the ‘other’. So, by defining itself a group defines others.” We, as Asians in a predominantly white Australia, know what this othering feels like (whether it’s covert, unconscious or intentional), where we feel we don’t quite belong because we’re not white. And this process is key to social identities of both the in group and the out group. It’s something often studied by sociologists like Dr Zevallos who says these identities come with an element of exclusivity. “Just as when we formally join a club or an organisation, social membership depends upon fulfilling a set of criteria. It just so happens that such criteria are socially-constructed (that is, created by societies and social groups).” 

So for us Asians in Australia who have been ‘othered’, we often end up finding spaces where we’re comfortable, and finding people who have had these similar experiences of ‘othering’. And often that ends up meaning hanging out with other Asians. We end up living in our own little bubbles, these small subcultural groups in society. Especially in larger cities, we see ethnic enclaves start to form, where we end up living with people who are of the same ethnicity to ourselves.

And these bubbles are nice. As with any ‘in’ group, there’s lots that doesn’t need to be said, and lots that you just understand about each other. This stickiness to others of the same race (as well as ethnicity, social class and gender) is another sociological tendency called the ‘homophily effect.’ And homophily in race creates the strongest divides according to McPherson, Smith-Lovin and Cook. Racial and ethnic homophily has been observed in “a wide array of relationships, ranging from the most intimate bonds of marriage and confiding, to the more limited ties of schoolmate friendship and work relations... to the mere fact of appearing in public together” they state. It’s very comforting and validating to be around similar people, and we need safe spaces where we can let our guard down a bit. But a side effect can be that we stay in our safe spaces and never mix with the rest of the communities around us.

So there I am in the house, and I’m noticing all the other straight white dudes hanging around. I think me from 10 years ago would have felt quite uncomfortable being the only Asian and the only queer person there. And admittedly, I was a little on alert when I first arrived. How will I be received? I wonder what unconscious racial biases these people have that I might have to deal with. Will they be comfortable talking about their usual stuff around a gay guy?

Some friends who knew I was going away were shocked I would throw myself into this sort of situation. And even 20 year old Jay would probably have been very shy. He probably would have waited for people to come up to him to break the ice, and would have felt too self conscious to try and talk to people that he thought were so different from him. But the present Jay just dove right in. Once I started chatting to the guys, I quickly realised I would be fine. No, more than fine; I am going to have an amazing weekend.

See, I realised we shared a lot of other things in common outside of our race and sexuality. At the risk of sounding a bit pretentious, they were things like: we wanted to try new things, we didn’t need to get drunk to enjoy ourselves, we loved body movement and fitness, we wanted to improve our lives, and we were open to being challenged. And I felt so at ease.

Throughout the weekend, I of course got talking about Shoes Off, and I was pleasantly surprised by how interested and receptive these guys were. After all, it’s a show made for Asians, yet they seemed keen to learn more about this side of culture they didn’t really know a lot about. I even felt comfortable challenging a couple of the guys on their view on race, which I wouldn’t usually try to do.

What I’m saying is that we can often place a lot of emphasis on things like race (and sexuality) - they’re not Asian so they might not get me. To some extent, this is true, they won’t get a lot of our experience. But we have so many other things that form who we are. And for me, these guys who were not of the same race or sexuality were so on the same level as me on so many other things that I ended up clicking with them more than a lot of my Asian friends.

Safe spaces with people of the same race are great, and are so important. But let me encourage you to step outside these bubbles. You might surprise yourself in who you meet and how much you do share with them.