I talked to two co-workers and also a homosexual friend about how they would define culture and diversity.  Although all three are different ethnicities and from different walks of life, they still had very similar answers.
     They defined culture as a person's ethnicity and their traditions, such as the foods they eat, clothes they wear, languages they speak, music they listen to, etc.  They all talked about diversity as all of these different cultures living together and accepting of each other's differences.
     In talking with each of these people, I realize that they are spitting out what they have been hearing in the last few years about culture and diversity.  They were giving the standard textbook, politically correct answers that we have all been taught over the past few years to say in order to be able to claim that we celebrate diversity and are multicultural competent people.  They are aware of the surface aspects only.  I was the same way before starting this course.  I realize that most people think that they show multicultural competence and that they promote diversity, but they are still above the surface.  I think that this course has taught me to examine more than just the culture that we can see with our eyes.  I have learned that there is so much to a person's culture that we would never even know about without getting to know that person.  I now realize that culture is so complex and makes a person who they are.  I think that all of the people that I talked to last week about culture and diversity are still on the surface.  They haven't been challenged to examine their own culture and haven't been enlightened to the fact that culture runs so much deeper than a persons color, language, etc.