Growing up near New York City, I have been constantly surrounded by different immigrant communities and people from different cultures. I never once batted an eye. This I considered to be normal. Moving to Ourense, the capital city of Ourense province, where the population sits at around 104,000 people, I was suddenly confronted with a total homogeneity of culture. Most people eat the same foods, observe the same siesta, practice the same cultural traditions. Witnessing this cultural pride is impressive. However, I must admit the lack of diversity is omnipresent.
In the capital city of Ourense, only 6.4% of the population are not Spanish citizens. Within a few weeks of teaching at the local high school in Ourense, I quickly realized that my students had a narrow view about diversity. They considered all Latin American countries to have the same traditions and conflated all Asian countries into being 'Chinese.' For context, very few of my 12th grade students had heard of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. before and virtually no one knew who Rosa Parks was. If I asked students to name one famous person who has Asian heritage, they probably could not.
