Two pennies
Diversity is extremely rare where I live. There are a few blacks, a few latinos, a few asian kids, then a few hundred white caucasians. Besides me, I think there's one or two jewish kids, and I believe that they actually practice their religion.
Before I lived in Maine I grew up in Brooklyn, and things were extremely different there, a sweep of the room would garner every race you could ever ask for, the whites might even be the minority. So I was born into diversity, and was never bothered by it. It just comes down to what you consider pretty and what you don't, and this varies from person to person.
I wish I could say the same for my beleagured classmates. Not too many of them have grown up outside of this humble residence, which means that they have had little or no experience with diversity on a large scale. They talk about blacks not necessarily in a derogatory way (they're afraid of being labelled racists of course, fear is all that keeps some of them in check) but as if they are a totally different type of human, like they think differently, act differently, as if they are really different, when in reality all that makes them different is the color of their skin.
It may only be their rampant stupidity, a conversation somehow started up in my "math class for dummies" about what you do if a black person smiles at you. They were dumbfounded, they could hardly grasp the very action of looking at a black person, for fear of them thinking that they were racist, when in reality they were only inexperienced. I simply replied:
"Like any person who smiles at you, you smile back."
When I went on "that cruise" to mexico over july my family and I sat down next to a young black couple, I've gotta confess it had been awhile since I had interacted with anyone of another race, and at first I was a bit uncomfortable, which I regret now more than anything--but fifteen minutes into our conversations I was laughing at their jokes and they were laughing at mine. I remember the woman being especially attractive.