Multicultural Pluralism

The perception of multicultural education in the United States has certainly evolved over the preceding decades. As a corollary of the social activism and desegregation movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the emergence of ethnic studies within public education systems came about as a sincere recognition that all students should – and must – learn to participate in a diverse world (Trent, 2012). While all governments expect and sometimes require a minimal level of civil responsibility and participation from their citizens, it is impossible to overstate the importance of freedom of association, religion, speech, and political organization for protecting group difference. However, parallel to various sociopolitical disturbances that have increasingly

Although this struggle is often conceptualized by interested political entities as the central deficiency of multiculturalism, it actually involves different aspects of cultural pluralism, each of which raises its own challenges. From a historical perspective, minorities have been incorporated into mainstream sociopolitical communities through a range of approaches, from the subjugation and deconstruction of previously autonomous cultures to the voluntary immigration of families and individuals (Trent, 2012). These differences in the method of incorporation have profoundly affected the nature of minority groups within hegemonic social constructs, and the type of affiliation which they have sought with general society (Trent, 2012). Given the apparent complexities with respect to social identity, multicultural pedagogy has traditionally viewed critical (and constructive) discussions about the recognition of minorities as positive developments in the continual evaluation and re-evaluation of American socio-politics (Trent,

Indeed, much of the public debate over the appropriate role of multicultural education have become entangled in polemics often aligned along the political spectrum with regards to culture and pedagogy (Trent, 2012). Opponents of the field of ethnic studies frequently claim that it actually isolates and victimizes minorities, encumbering their integration into mainstream American society. These so-called “assimilationists” argue for a single culture to which all groups should subscribe, a view which has considerable influence in many school districts and programs across the nation and which social conservatives continue to press in the political realm (Trent, 2012). From the reasonable assertion that social cohesion is formed through shared values and compromise, this position has deteriorated into a rigid extremism which claims that “special interests” have wrongly sought preferential treatment in a system that ostensibly provides equal opportunities for all members of society. Of course, as the U.S. population has become more multiracial, the assimilationist position has become more difficult to rationalize in an era in which the universal applicability of a common culture has increasingly been called into question (Trent,