In the United States, the context of the discourse includes law, tradition, ethnic population, and attitudes on federal, state, community, and organizational levels. Contextual elements that seem given should be subjected to scrutiny of the same intensity as that given to controversial elements. In "A Culture in Common, Diane Ravitch states "The classrooms of America today are more racially and ethnically diverse than ever." (1992, p. 8) Asa G. Hilliard III, in "Why We Must Pluralize the Curriculum," points out that "...Europeans are rapidly becoming the minority." (1991/1992, p. 12) Multiculturists like to accept the reported increase in ethnic diversity because it offers a "majority vote" to traditionally under-represented people, assuming that minorities will join together against the majority. Traditionalists like to accept the same idea of growing diversity because that idea lends validity to multiculturism as a threat with potential to rouse the apathetic majority to the desired political action.
The assumption of increasing diversity is used by both multiculturists and traditionalists. Perhaps the phenomenon is objectively true. If it is, should the majority be threatened? Can the minority be taking over? The "minority take-over" proposition is a fire-starter statistical "fact." Such facts must be examined, separated into their components, and understood. In the case of the "minority take-over," understanding the phenomenon makes it less useful to either side as a means of sparking partisan reaction.
What does it mean to say that our classrooms are becoming more diverse than ever? Are minorities staging a takeover? Will minorities become the majority? If hordes of immigrants of diverse ethnic identity were really flowing across open borders into the United States, the fears cited by Western traditionalists might have some validity. They are not. We have immigration laws, and the number of illegal immigrants is relatively small. Legal immigration and work and study visas bring human resources into communities, schools, agriculture, and businesses. Our communities, schools, agriculture, and businesses recruit immigrants because hands and backs and minds are needed to do the work that makes us -- and them -- prosperous.
The statistical increase in ethnic population in the United States results more from our political definitions than from immigration. As we define ethnicity, an interracial couple produces minority children. The minority child, who, being half White could be called White as easily as not, is in fact always designated as a minority child. As an adult, that child has only minority children even though these children may be biologically as little as one quarter minority. If we reverse the definition and state that the biracial child is White, the trend to an increase in ethnic population would decline rather than increase. The biracial person under this reversed definition would, however, be excluded from benefits of social programs designed to promote equality, such as Affirmative Action initiatives. The point of this argument is not that we should change our designations, but rather that we should recognize them as designations we have chosen to make.
Despite the financial advantage of Affirmative Action, the definition of minority status based upon non-White biological derivation has already begun to erode. In the most recent census, individuals were permitted to claim multiple ethnic identities, and those claiming multiple categories were dropped from the counts of racial categories. In fact, the definition has never been absolute. If the number of White Americans who claim some biological American Indian decent and have spiritual or cultural ties to American Indian ideas and practices were deducted from those officially designated as members of the White majority, White Americans would have been a minority long ago.
Another cause of ethnic populations increasing is the lower socioeconomic level of many minorities, characterized by less opportunity for career and life choices. Poor people are economically restricted from education, recreation, cultural participation, and discretionary medical services. These factors contribute to a higher birth rate among minority populations than among more affluent majority groups that are better educated and career-oriented. It is a continuous mystery that the poor always have more children than the wealthy, when the wealthy can more easily afford them.
Also in the area of contextual factors, it is important to note that the greatest opportunity for discourse on multicultural issues is available in Western European cultures. James A. Banks, in "Multicultural Education: For Freedom's Sake," notes the "ways in which the multicultural vision is consistent with the democratic ideals of the West and with the heritage of Western civilization." (1991/1992, 32) To fail to teach and sustain the culture that developed the ideas of personal liberty, choice, and democratic government would be an error we were warned away from in our first understandings, knowing as we all know, not to "bite the hand that feeds" or "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs." Those who migrate away from Western culture seeking more tolerant societies should tread carefully. The most universally tolerant groups in regard to multicultural inclusion are the liberal arm of Christian cultures (the really silent majority), and Western cultures that are philosophically based in humanism.
We must always remember that whomever we exclude, we consent to their exclusion. Multiethnic education that considers inequality and injustice only as it relates to race is as exclusionary as its rational and philosophical forbears who found it convenient to exclude dark-skinned people from humanity so that they might be used for slaves.
The goals we set must be inclusive and directed toward inclusion, and they must not in themselves create exclusion and injustice. Another reason that we must include gender, religion, and class as well as ethnic identity in our studies is that without such inclusion, we can never accomplish the third task. When the question is related to race alone, it is easily dismissed by majority people as a minority issue to which they are peripheral. It is just as easily perceived by each minority as their own issue, with everyone not in the group defined as an outsider. In order for the discourse to be meaningful, it is necessary that no one stand outside the issue. Each of us has gender, religion, class, and race. No one is an outsider.
The third and final task preparatory to discourse is the most difficult. Only when we personalize the issues and recognize the absolute necessity to treat with them seriously will we have any hope of changing systems that are unjust. To personalize the issues in this way, we have to consent to speak together, to listen, and to understand. Western traditionalists speak from power and they do not understand the pain of exclusion. In the four articles cited, Ravitch and Bullard are rational, conciliatory, and self-assured. They perceive unfairness, which can be addressed with reason. They do not feel or respond to pain, anger, and hopelessness. Because they do not share the pain of exclusion, their vision is limited. Banks and Hilliard know the pain. Because they speak with passion, they are less academically rational. The resulting discourse among these voices is a conversation between irrational people and people who can't understand. James Banks recognizes this effect in his observation that "The Western traditionalists ... and the multiculturists rarely engage in reflective dialogue." (32)
There is difficult work for both traditionalists and multiculturists in personalizing the issues:When traditionalists and multiculturists are both able to acknowledge real significant loss that can never be redressed except in continuing generations of free people, when we all agree to consider inclusion all-inclusive, and when we learn to look carefully and critically at the context of our terrors, then we will be capable of discourse on the difficult topic of persistent social inequality.