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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Interracial friendships

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Delete — Caknuck 20:27, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interracial friendships

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Interracial friendships (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
  • Comment: How so? This article is immature and requires some attention (editing and expansion), but I fail to see how it is an essay. So far as I can see about 90% of this article recounts facts from published sources (both mainstream and academic). The article contains no person antedotes. I can see nothing here that amounts to a "thesis"--a fact unproved by a single source that an essay (if the article were one) would aim to prove by synthesis. Fixer1234 02:10, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - JSTOR says that there is only one article citing the first source under references. The [http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2006/02/new_generation_doesnt_blink_at.php second] reference is less scholarly in nature. The third source is the abstract of Dr. Tyson's thesis. There are only three references as of now. Of the two current external links, the second is to a grad's students page and the first is to some organization. Is this notable enough to merit its own article?Brusegadi 03:07, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment: I agree the current set of references is a bit lacking. I'm currently collecting more, and I plan to post tommarow. Until then, check out comments on the talk page for this article left by user LizPage-Gould which lists more research that has been done on this topic. Fixer1234 06:02, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • keep Cited by reliable sources.----DarkTea© 11:40, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: The following are scholarly article which discuss "interracial friendships", the role of race in social interaction with-in peer groups, or as one article puts it the "ethnocultural composition of the peer networks of acculturated (i.e., multigeneration North American) and ethnoculturally-affiliated (i.e., immigrant/first generation) adolescents living within a multicultural context."
  • Polarized Socialization in an Urban High School [1]
  • Peer Interactions and Friendships in an Ethnically Diverse School Setting [2]
  • Table Hopping in the Cafeteria: An Exploration of "Racial" Integration in Early Adolescent Social Groups [3]
  • Cross-Group Contact Opportunities: Impact on Interpersonal Relationships in Desegregated Middle Schools [4]
  • Diversity and the Influence of Friendship Groups in College [5]
  • Peer Network Composition of Acculturated and Ethnoculturally-Affillated Adolescents in a Multicultural Setting [6]
  • An article from the Harvard Gazette reads: "In his research, John Stauffer focuses on the difficulties of interracial friendships in American history and literature." You can read an article by him about “Interracial Friendships in The Deerslayer’ by James Fenimore Cooper here.

There are more academic aricles to be found here, if you care to sort through them.

  • Furthermore there is this book: Some of My Best Friends: Writings on Interracial Friendships in which “Emily Bernard examines the complexities of interracial friendships -- white and black, Latino and white, black and Asian, black and Jewish -- in this poignant book…” (See this book on Google Books)

Let there be no doubt--these articles reinforce the notability of this topic. While it may indeed be better to use the wider term "intergroup friendships" (as some on the talk page suggests), it is clear that there has been much discussion of the nature/role race and ethnicity play in social interaction ("friendship")with-in peer groups. Fixer1234 19:00, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete - what an inane article; if people are around people of other races they will have more racial friends? Please tell me we don't need to statement such an obvious statement. I don't think I have ever read anything so lacking in value. If anything it is a definition that is summed up by the title of the article. There really is not much to say afterwards. There was one ray of light/iterest/value in the study quantifying races that are not as open to interracial relationships; however, that is best handled on the respective articles. --Storm Rider (talk) 19:12, 23 August 2007

(UTC)

  • Rebuttal:The article, I agree, is not very deep/comprehensive right now. Much of what is there is “obvious”. That is not the issue. The issue is whether or not the topic is notable enough for the article to grow into a quality source of information. I believe the links I’ve posted clearly demonstrate that this topic is notable and has been seriously studied. You may not have a person interest in the topic. That is your business. (In fact, I’m not really all that interested in the topic. I simply recognize its notability and figure that somebody ought to defend this article.) You write that “there really is not much to say” after the title of this article. Again, the links I’ve posted demonstrate that many highly-trained professionals would disagree. If anyone here really needs to see more links/data to be convinced of this topic's notability, I’ve just found this topic summary and bibliography prepared by two professors from Berkeley. Fixer1234 20:10, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep: As I post this, I am one of two keep votes on the page. However, I ask the admin who decides the outcome of this AfD to consider the justification offered by those voting “delete”. Most of the users argued that the article violated WP:NOR. Pointing out the citations in the article, I questioned what the reasoning behind their judgment. Not one voter offer arguments to justify his/her vote. Another delete vote reads, “The article is an essay.” First of all, I would like to point out that all articles on Wikipedia are essays—they are merely expository or informative rather than persuasive or argumentative. I assume this editor (Calgary) was arguing that the article violated WP:SYN. But, as I argued above, there is nothing in the article that amounts to a "thesis"--a new concept or fact unproved by a single source that the article attempts to argue for using a synthesis of published sources. Further, the links I posted above show that Interracial friendships is an established term/idea—it is not a neologism. Brusegadi agreed with me that “WP:NOR and WP:SYN…” did “…not seem to be problems.”
  • Another delete voter writes (and paraphrase) “This wouldn’t be in an encyclopedia would it? There is nothing here important enough to justify an article. It's normal after all.” I certainly agree that interracial relationships (friendship, marriage, etc) are perfectly normal—but that is not the issue. In fact, one point of interest for people who write on this topic seems to be the “difficulties of interracial friendships” that arise out of issues/situations that result from historically negative attitudes towards miscegenation in places like the Southern United States and South Africa. Other writers seem to be less concerned with such issues, and they approach the material with an interest in the multicultural aspects of intergroup friends. The point—what is at issue—is that there are a number of qualities that seem to make intergroup friendships unique.
  • The only other delete vote on the page (that does not fall into one of the categories I’ve already discussed) simply reads “U.S.-centric essay”. That, of course, is an issue for the normal editing process.
  • We who have voted for keep have a long list of sources to back up our claim that this is a notable and established topic. The current article is brief, but what is there is well cited. The sentence that was marked “citation need” was, in fact, supported by the second reference. [http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2006/02/new_generation_doesnt_blink_at.php (The USA Today article in question is reprinted here.)] I do not disagree that the article needs some work, but I firmly believe it should not be deleted. Fixer1234 19:45, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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