"It's only okay to call a Black person an idiot"--this statement marks the launch point for a personal essay about one family's negotiation of an act of racism that occurs in an afterschool conversation among 6-year-olds. A work of educational criticism, the essay takes on the school's passive refusal to acknowledge race and racism,…

This paper explores student participation in dialogue in two sections of a master's level course in diversity and social justice. The researchers, including a student from the course and the instructor of the course, analyzed responses to a brief survey and transcripts from student focus groups. Three major themes relevant to students' attitudes…

The purpose of this article is first to provide a literature review that informs the race, class, and ethnic diversity among Muslims in the United States; then to show how this literature review may acknowledge developing multicultural education in Islamic schools in the United States. In the direction of these aims, the author reviews the…

In this article the authors specifically address the use of narratives in the form of analogies as an experiential learning activity. The use of analogies as an experiential learning tool in multicultural education can be helpful in a number of ways. Analogies provide an alternative tool for processing multicultural topics with students who have…

In this article, author Annie Nguyen describes her personal encounters with the "Model Minority Myth" as a young Vietnamese American in a doctoral program. This myth assumes that all Asian Americans are inherently smart and high achieving, which is problematic when in fact there are many Asian American individuals who perform poorly.…

White teachers see racial diversity in the schools as a "necessary evil." Common beliefs are that (1) Black students are saved by nurturing White teachers and well-behaved White children; and (2) White students learn from "disadvantaged" Black children the dual lesson of empathy and gratitude. A pilot project in the fall of…

Hawai'i is a small place on a large planet; Kanaka Maoli, the Indigenous people of the islands, today comprise just 20% of the total population within the state, and less than 1% of the total U.S. population across the nation (U.S. Census Bureau, n.d.). Yet Hawai'i, promoted for centuries as an exotic tourist destination, and Hawaiian culture as…

In this article, the author offers the theme of intergenerational tension as an approach to bring students from varied cultural backgrounds together into a shared conversation, one that resonates with their personal experiences and that potentially can lead them to more critical reflection on such issues as race, national identity, and social…

Founded in 1990, the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) is the largest U.S.-based professional organization advocating for multicultural education. NAME, like many other organizations interested in progressive social or educational reform, faces a series of challenges in its attempts to maintain its social justice thrust, such…

Two of the subcultures involved in an intranational struggle are those who take politics and the civic arrangements seriously on the one hand and those who scorn and revile the political process on the other. Although people do not usually think of politics as a minority subculture, it is clear that it belongs to a category of organized activities…

In this new global society, understanding the voices of the diverse groups represented in schools is advantageous for all students. No one can deny that fair representation and positive images of all diverse populations in textbooks can only serve to develop students' awareness of diversity and reduce prejudice. The issue is how can school…

Contemporary academic discourse about diversity and discrimination is a multilayered and contested landscape, with intersecting and conflicting views from a variety of ideological and theoretical positions even from within the field of education. Compounding this tumult are manifestations of nationalist perspectives that may employ similar…

The author explores changing representations of Asians in the history of the United States through critical cultural and historical analysis and delineates the underlying power relationships in the racial discourse of the United States. The author argues that the representation of Asians, especially the model minority construct, has been…