This chapter examines how studies focused on the same topic--disproportionality in special education--can generate vastly different conclusions about its sources and causes. By analyzing existing disagreements in the field, we explore essential questions about what constitutes high-quality and relevant evidence when seeking to understand how,…

If one turns to the U.S. government for answers to a daunting question: "Just who is a Hispanic?", he/she discovers that it has two different approaches to this definitional question. Both are products of a 1976 act of Congress and the administrative regulations that flow from it. One approach defines a Hispanic or Latino as a member of an ethnic…

Federal standards established in 1997 allow respondents to select multiple-race categories. These new standards changed the single-race subgroup definitions that the government has required since 1977. Meta-analysis, research on long-term assessment trends, and other research involving historical comparisons must account for the definitional…

Some of the basic characteristics of ethnic groups in contemporary American society are described. A typology for defining and classifying ethnic groups is formulated which is more consistent with the current characteristics of ethnic groups than many existing definitions of ethnicity. (Author/AM)

Points out linguistic and logical inconsistencies that come into play when African populations are discussed through the medium of Eurocentric discourse. "African" is suggested as a more logical way to define people with an origin on the African continent than the term "black". (SLD)

Explores the inclusion of people of multiple ancestries who are only part Asian in Asian American Studies. The history of intermarriage in the United States means that, as increasing numbers of people choose to embrace multiple racial identities, Asian Americans must rearrange their definitions of what it means to be Asian American. (SLD)

Members of minority groups in Britain need to explore new terms to describe their ethnicity, terms that establish them as part of the British mainstream first, and then describe their cultural heritage, so that the extended experience of more than one culture is recognized. (SLD)

Addresses the question of how constraints are established by which Hispanicity is determined vis-a-vis language. It argues that, if Spanish-English bilingualism comes to prevail among American Hispanics, they will lose the Spanish language as a mother tongue and their distinct culture, becoming an Anglophone subculture similar to Irish or Italian…