Pop Culture’s Greatest Interracial College Roommates

From the Department of Obvious, a new study is touting that having a college roommate of a different race can reduce prejudice and diversify friendships (of course, it also claims that having a white roommate can “boost black students’ academic performance,” but let’s leave that bit of fuckery alone).

But how does that bear out in real life (and by “real life,” we of course mean “television and movies”)? Hollywood clearly loves a good interracial buddy story, and nothing assuages its liberal guilt like an academic rainbow coalition. We took a look back over the past 20 years and came up with five movies and five TV shows that knew the value of educational diversity…

TELEVISION SHOWS:

A DIFFERENT WORLD
• Lisa Bonet + Marisa Tomei = Top-ranked threesome fantasy of the late ’80s. (They beat out Jo and Natalie from Facts of Life by a nose).

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GREEK
• Not only are frat brothers Calvin and Grant interracial, but they’re both gay–and have the hots for each other. Double taboo! Plus a healthy dose of pause!

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THE BIG BANG THEORY
• Let’s not quibble about whether they’re actually still in college (they’re not), but if you think a show about high-IQ physicists isn’t going to include a South Asian brother, then you clearly aren’t up on the latest stereotypes.

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SAVED BY THE BELL: THE COLLEGE YEARS
• Zack and Slater are finally roommates in the spinoff (to the delight of slash-fic writers everywhere). What’s that? A.C. Slater isn’t supposed to be Latino? So Mario Lopez is a white dude now? Don’t give us that Vin-Diesel-in-Boiler-Room shit, we beg you.

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SCRUBS
• Turk and J.D. are in their own twisted way the most realistic interracial roommate buddies possible: They recognize their differences, they make fun of it, and the ceaseless racist propaganda of our society has instilled in them secret massive man-crushes on each other. As a bonus, here’s how they met on the first day of college:

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