We did, yes. We lived on base at Quantico, so you’d think that would be the answer there, but really my kids got that question at gymnastics. The people we knew were surprisingly religious and conservative in that area- not really what we were expecting initially, but then we just figured it is the south and we had miscalculated.
We also got it in the Hudson valley and in Philly… and in LA and in San Fran… and everywhere in between. Maybe it’s just luck of the draw?
I’m not sure if this is what you mean by ‘perspective’, however, I clearly recall when in my 20s, my view of ‘real’ Coming to America life was : coffee in those blue printed ‘to-go’ cups, which you see on cop shows, and eating Chinese food out of cartons; to me, both were ‘living the ‘real’ American life’.
When I eventually landed here, one of the first memories I have is of disgusting coffee in a blue to-go cup, closely followed by eating fake Chinese food in a to-go carton!
That’s my perspective - and, never again for either!!!
And now introduce the variable of being from another country.
Back in the 90s when I was in college, I would get all sorts of weird questions (did we have running water, did we have roads, etc).
I always laugh when I tell people my first reaction when I first came to my current city to visit H (then BF). I literally cried and felt sorry for people here. I was still a teenager and most of my years had been in the DC area where everything was new, big, and shiny. And then I went to college where everyone was young and educated. And then I came here - an economically challenged “small city with big city problems.” Yeah, it took me a good year to adjust. It’s not so bad, really. There are a lot of really good people here. A lot of them. But after nearly 30 years, I’m ready to leave. If it was up to me, I would not have a permanent residence and just wander the world.
But some funny anecdotes. I’ve been deemed the Jewish expert in the office. I am not Jewish, but most people here are Southern Baptist and figured I was the closest thing. Another co-worker seriously asked me if I spoke in tongues because I grew up Catholic.
My kids went to a small private K-8 school. Technically, that was more diverse than the public schools. It was majority white, but you had several Hispanics, African American, Indian, Asian, etc. Nobody was very wealthy, but it was more like a typical middle/upper middle class public school in another area. In contract, the public HS is 80-85% AA and everyone gets free breakfast and lunch. It’s rough, and my kids got a very different high school experience than mine in NOVA. Both report that their friends at college (one at a large public, the other at a small LAC) just could not relate to their stories.
I made a point of traveling to all kinds of places with the kids, so that they could experience different ways of living - especially big cities/mass transit. But, I’m sure they still have their bubbles. I think we all do to some extent.
I chuckled when I read this.A few years ago a colleague helped out at a country youth club for young teenagers and returned with this story one week. The person running the club thought it a good idea to invite a couple of youth workers from a large, multi ethnic town to talk to the children. They started by asking them if they knew any black people. The children all replied that they did. What did they know? That they were very rich. Who? They chorused Michael Jackson!
The facial expressions of the visitors were said to be a sight to behold.
When we first moved to OH my mommy and me group assumed I was Jewish because I said “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas.” They even wrapped my secret santa gift in blue paper.
I took my kids on a vacation in Nicaragua (among the poorest countries in the world and certainly the poorest in the Western Hemisphere at the time) and they fed families who lived in the dump in Managua. The families scavenged for a living. We spent a few days helping an American woman (ex-CIA, I think) who realized that kids who attended the public schools through high school were not qualified to attend college in Nicaragua. She decided that one key to helping the country was to build a middle class (lawyers, accountants, engineers) and that Nicaragua should be training its capable kids regardless of income to get this training. So she had identified poor kids in the barrio who were capable of doing the work and going to university and raising tuition for them at private schools which would qualify them to attend university in Nicaragua. She mentored them, had some live with her if volatile family situations required it, and reached out to largely Americans for $250 per year per kid – which covered tuition, school uniforms and other stuff. Generally an eye-opening trip.
It’s ladies like that who I respect the most in life TBH, not those who live in luxury. Those are the type we try to help out too - after doing as much checking as possible to be sure it’s legit and not just mostly a front to get money.
In our retirement “elsewhere” our plans include trying to help out those around us with education or anything else to better their lives. We do that now where we live too, of course.
My DS just graduated from High School in a class of 350. The Principal noted that there were kids from more than 50 countries in the class, and that they spoke 26 different first languages. Melting pot, indeed.
For college, he has chosen to go to a small rural school with very little diversity and where almost half the kids come from private schools. Gonna be a culture shock for sure!
And because they wanted to be inclusive, at the kids’ Christmas party, they had both Santa and Hanukah Harry. 
I was fortunate enough to grow up in several continents, which gave me at least a certain degree of perspective. One of my favorite memories is in a very diverse elementary school I was, where we celebrated as much traditional celebrations from different cultures and religions as we could, I learned so much.