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…

In this article, the authors Dunn, Dotson, Ford, and Roberts, discuss the ways they, as professors of multicultural education with different identities and experiences, attempt to understand and respond to students' implicit or explicit resistance in their classes. Though there has been a broad range of literature on student resistance, the…

Silencing race dialogue in urban classrooms is painful for students of color. The author of this article, an urban teacher, documents her resistance to colorblind racism by strategically including race in daily classroom practices. She argues that acknowledging emotionality and Whiteness are essential steps that teachers must take to reinvest in…

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…

This article is both reflective and critical as the author seeks to engage in a dialogue that strategizes how the needs of diverse teachers are met without essentializing their identities and experiences. Within the tendency of equating teaching with Whiteness is the assumption that Black teachers intrinsically know how to teach Black students and…

The United States is home to more than two million refugees since 1975, with over half arriving as children. Refugees are semi-voluntary immigrants fleeing persecution in their home countries and seeking a country willing to resettle them. They may have experienced war, separation from or loss of family, and loss of home and basic needs. One…

A growing body of scholarship in the United States focuses on the "multicultural" dispositions, ideologies, and attitudes that teachers carry from preservice training into classroom practice. However, little attention has been paid to the dispositions, ideologies, and attitudes of multicultural teacher educators--those tasked with preparing…

In this qualitative study, the authors explore the connections between a preservice teacher education curriculum and the development of teacher identity. Focus is given to the impact Ruby Payne's (2001) "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" has on the ideological development of preservice special education teachers embarking on an urban…

For a faculty member of East Asian ancestry, raised in Latin America, race became a salient part of the author's identity during adulthood while living and working in the southern United States. While the race-related experiences the author continues to have on and off campus are deeply personal, race became an academic undertaking, and centering…

This is a reflection on my life experience as a woman of color. I teach Spanish courses as well as teacher preparation courses. I know what it was like to grow up in a nearly all Black community, then move to one which was almost exclusively White. As an adult looking back on my childhood, I believe that it is especially important that culturally…

Teaching a course in multicultural education at a largely white, middle-class, suburban liberal arts college has its challenges. Among those challenges is a prevailing naivete among the student population regarding the role sociocultural structures have in creating the kinds of opportunities that afford social privileges; likewise, the students…

This article talks about a collaborative "Great White North" project which began through a chance meeting of the authors at the annual meeting of the "National Association for Multicultural Education" (NAME) in Atlanta in November of 2005. The authors are two White males from Canada of about the same age (late 40s) who have both been involved in…

This article presents an interview with Ronald Takaki, a prolific and respected author and a successful teacher who wrote a number of important histories that explore the cultural diversity of the United States of America, including "From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America" (1994), "Strangers from a Different Shore: A…

At the core of the epistemology of black identity in the 20th century United States is the assertion that freedom is a human right, not a privilege to be earned. By the late 19th century, an ideology of racial uplift had emerged that revolved around four concepts--compassion, service, education, and a commitment to social and economic justice for…

It seems rather amusing to say that the author belongs to a minority, no less a hidden minority. After all, at first glance, she appears to be just another white girl (or woman). She grew up in the mid-west in a predominantly white community, middle class, and well educated. The paradox comes in their definition of minority. Today, as they seek to…