I am not sure if I can believe this article about hiring diverse friends for your party, but here’s what the article says:
“Known as Party Peeps, the year-old Philadelphia-based company offers a rainbow of ethnic and cultural “city types” who will gladly attend the most mundane suburban shindigs and pretend to be the client’s best friends, college roommates, ex-lovers, or former traveling companions, showing all in attendance just how cultured and connected the host is.”
This suburban company is an example of how our society tends to like the “idea” of diversity but that many people aren’t willing to actually engage in relationships with people who might look, live, or believe differently than we do.
As I wrote in Peppermint-Filled Pinatas, the most time-consuming yet most effective way to develop friendships with people in our pluralistic world is to actually spend time with the people around us! We cannot truly serve, love, reach, or even influence those we have excluded from our lives.
I hope this story isn’t true, but it shouldn’t surprise us if it is.
