Miller writes:
> Not really. What’s so fascinating about it?
It fascinates me when I learn how diverse someone’s roots are, especially when I thought I had them pegged. I was fascinated to learn, for instance, that Keanu Reeves, who I assumed had grown up just as some WASP California surfer dude, was born in Lebanon to a mother born in England and an American father of Hawaiian and Chinese descent and grew up in Toronto and Los Angeles. Maybe the reason that I’m so interested in this is that I grew up among provincial hicks entirely (yes, entirely) of Northern European descent. It was rare in my hometown for anybody to even be Catholic, and nobody was Jewish, let alone something more exotic. Maybe this is why I now live in an apartment complex that’s far more black, Asian, and Hispanic than non-Hispanic white and where I’m probably the most well-off person in the entire complex. I frequently eat at funky little Mexican restaurants where I’m not just the only person speaking English most of the time, but I’m probably one of the few people who isn’t an illegal alien. And this is certainly not something that I have to do. Nearly all of my co-workers, who mostly have graduate degrees, are whites who grew up in middle- to upper-middle-class homes, and they insist in living in suburbs that are nearly all white. Diversity fascinates me. You don’t understand that? O.K., so shoot me.
