This book acknowledges the reality that in the late 1990s we live in a new racial context. The reassertion of white supremacy has created a social and educational world where many whites are angry, feel racially victimized, and stand ready to protect their privilege. Such conditions breed fear, hatred, and further violence. Any multicultural education that fails to recognize these conditions will follow the path of irrelevancy - a path too often taken by previous educational reforms. While concepts of cultural difference and diversity are certainly addressed in Changing Multiculturalism, one of its key features involves the analysis of positionality. How has one's race, ethnic, class, and/or gender consciousness been produced? What is the impact of this consciousness production on one's identity? In these ways, the book attempts to move beyond traditional texts in multicultural education. Both critical and practical, this book promises to engage the reader in a critically grounded multiculturalism.
Joe Lyons Kincheloe (December 14, 1950 – December 19, 2008) was a professor and Canada Research Chair at the Faculty of Education, McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and founder of The Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy. He wrote more than 45 books, numerous book chapters, and hundreds of journal articles on issues including critical pedagogy, educational research, urban studies, cognition, curriculum, and cultural studies.