One in three white Brits say they don’t have any friends from an ethnic minority background, according to a recent survey by pollster YouGov. What’s more, 12% of respondents from an ethnic minority also admitted to not having any non-white friends.
The responses differ significantly by location: The further north you go, the less likely it is that white residents say they have friends from ethnic minority backgrounds:
It’s not that surprising that white Londoners are more likely to have non-white friends. The latest government figures show that while 14% of Brits as a whole are from a non-white background, people of color now comprise the majority in London, making up 55% of the city’s population. In the UK, the ethnic minority population is more concentrated in big cities, while whites are more prevalent in rural areas.
The one-in-three white Brits without minority friends may sound like a lot, but it could be worse. A 2014 report by the Public Religion Research Institute found that three-quarters of white Americans don’t have any non-white friends.