Peer relationships are central to the health and psychosocial development of adolescents. In multiethnic settings, studies indicate that minority adolescents tend to prefer friendships with youth who share their ethnoracial background. Studies also show that having such friends buffers the stress associated with the racism many are liable to encounter in their interactions with the mainstream. This paper will present findings of a grounded theory study examining the social interactions of visible minority youth living in predominantly White areas where socializing with friends of one's ethnoracial background is not an option. The study was guided by the symbolic interactionist perspective and was conducted in two comparable, predominantly White Canadian cities in different provinces: Kingston Ontario and Moncton, New Brunswick. Visible minorities were defined in accordance with Canada's Employment Equity Act, as persons other than Aboriginal persons, who are Non-Caucasian in race or non-White in colour.

Although Canada is a multicultural nation, ethnoracial diversity is not evenly distributed throughout the country. A small number of major immigrant receiving, metropolitan centres have large concentrations of visible minority youth; In a host of smaller cities and towns across the country, however, ethnoracial diversity is limited. Typically many ethic groups are represented in these communities but the numbers in any one are few. Most research on visible minority adolescents has been conducted in centres with large concentrations of minority groups. The findings of this study indicate that visible minority adolescents living in predominantly White communities face a different set of challenges in their relationships with peers than those reported in the large centres. These challenges will be presented, the different strategies used by adolescents in dealing with these challenges will be described, and the core process, linking these strategies together identified as, acting like sugar in tea, will be explained.