Post-race or the Persistence of Race?

Despite decades of social, political, and legal activism and advocacy around educational equity and diversity, classrooms today are still persistently segregated and racial discrimination continues to effect educational outcomes. So while scholars in a variety of disciplines have recognized that race is socially constructed, minorities continue to experience the impact of racialist thinking in schools, colleges, and universities across the nation. How can progressive teachers understand these dual trends towards increasing local and national diversity alongside persistent racial and ethnic discrimination? What impact has the entry of immigrants and minorities as students and teachers had on classroom theory and practice?

This issue of Radical Teacher seeks to understand and analyze the teaching of race and ethnicity in education, particularly the ways in which teachers explain the current complexities of race and racism in American culture. How do we teach about racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity in our classrooms? How do we teach the specific social and material consequences of racial identity beyond a black-white model? How do we think about coalitions among and between students of different races, ethnicities, and nationalities? How do we teach students to form such alliances?

Topics might include:

• the teaching of multilingual classrooms
• lesson plans on local and global, economic and political migrations
• the impact of high stakes testing on diverse student populations
• the effects of standards-based and/or "English only" curriculums
• the past and present of multiracial and multiethnic alliances
• lessons in comparative ethnic histories and literatures
• the varieties of legal and political discrimination affecting various racial and ethnic minorities
• examples of shared strategies and tactics of protest across racial and ethnic groups
• the past and present of African-American, Latino, Asian-American, and American Ethnic studies programs
• teaching diversity in homogeneous classrooms
• the use national histories in classrooms
• the effect of vouchers on students on color
• the past and present of community control movements
• the role of unions in multiracial school districts, colleges, and universities