Diversity rocks.

A friend who grew up in Oak Park and went to high school with me visited Cambridge on Sunday. Andrew went to college in Scotland and now is taking a masters degree there, making this his 5th year in the UK. We laughed about language barriers and culture shock and the British degrees that we are working for but don't understand (What the hell is an MLitt? an MPhil?!) and the pub culture that is now our second nature. We discussed Obama's image abroad and how he has made both of us less likely to claim Canadian citizenship in polite conversation. It was a joy to share such common opinions and experiences, ESPECIALLY when he said, "You know, it really takes someone from Oak Park to know what I mean when I say I miss black people, Jews, and Mexicans."
BAM.
THAT IS SO TRUE and so hard to admit in a politically-correct way. I'm surrounded by diversity, in that yesterday I rowed in a boat with 8 people of 6 nationalities and my dorm of 15 people comprises 13 countries of origin. The school I volunteer at has 440 students who speak 52 languages, and there are number charts on the walls labeled in French and Urdu. But Cambridge at a glance is very white, and is in a Christian country. I had to learn to recognize and appreciate a different kind of diversity from Chicago's, in that two white people here might speak different languages, come from different cultures, and hold very different beliefs, not to mention pursue a variety of academic interests.
Sounds obvious, but I was used to diversity meaning multicolored. I look forward to going to London where there are black people (although they most likely have British accents and not the South-Side-of-Chicago speech that I so miss) and people in Islamic dress, and my head turns when a rare conversation in the street is about bar mitzvahs, and I sadly try (and fail) to make my own guacamole.
I love my global community, though I wish it had some more Northern hemisphere minorities in it, and I am for the first time aware of how lucky I was to grow up in a place with racial, cultural, and religious diversity. Missing ethnic groups still seems not PC to me since of course no two Mexicans are the same, etc, but recognizing the value and fun of knowing people from very different backgrounds may be the most important lesson I'm learning in this little town of people who look the same but have wonderfully different life stories.