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francis April 23rd, 2011

Francis Wardle

Recently I have become aware of a trend in academia to criticize the multiracial movement and its progress. Identity in Education (Sanchez-Casal & Macdonald, 2009) includes a negative chapter by Michele Elam (who apparently also has two upcoming books on this topic, which one assumes will also be negative); Color Struck (Adekunle & Williams, 2010) also includes several very negative attacks on the movement, along with some fairly positive chapters.

It should be noted that publishers only publish books that they believe will sell. Thus, there clearly is an appetite in the academic community for this push back against the progress of the multiracial movement.

What’s going on?

It is only natural for any new movement to produce a negative reaction, especially from people, disciplines, academic departments, and social and political causes that feel threatened. To some extent this is positive, even if this attack is surprisingly vicious and derogatory. But these particular critiques are inaccurate and misguided.

These writers are misguided because, 1) they have no real understanding of the history of the multiracial movement, 2) they use the wrong documents and historical events for their analysis of the movement, 3) they view the movement and its success through a critical theory prism, 4) they totally ignore and belittle the reality of multiracial children, families and people in America, and 5) they are wedded to the old ways of looking at race in this country.

No Understanding of the Movement

The heart and soul of the multiracial movement was the roughly 80 support groups that dotted the U.S. and Canadian landscape during the 1980s to mid 1990s (Brown & Douglass, 2003; Wardle, 2004; Williams, 2006). These support networks created a whole body of newsletters, conferences, and local advocacy activities. Second to these influences on the movement were national publications – Interracial Voice, New People, and Interrace

While some of the support groups, such as the Multiracial Association of Southern California (MASC), included active members from local colleges and universities, local families, young people, and multiracial adults dominated their memberships. The movement is not indebted to academia, academic writings, academic leaders, college student groups, or other academic organizations or activities. It was a truly grass-roots movement with no single leadership and little support from academia (Brown & Douglass, 2003; Wardle, 2004). Even the national organizations did not fully represent all these local, grass-roots support organizations.

Got it Wrong

The chapters that I recently read criticizing the movement focus on Root’s Manifesto: A Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People (1996), Kay Williams’ book (2006), Newt Gingrich’s support for including a multiracial category on the 2000 census, the choice of visual images on book covers (Elam, 2009), and the relevance of the college classroom in defining the movement and it’s impact. None of these approaches make much sense as a way to examine the history and direction of the multiracial movement in this country.

Root’s Manifesto

In her 1996 book, Maria Root includes the A Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People (p.3-14). Rainier Spencer makes the case that this document is somehow the Bible of the multiracial movement (2010). First, the height of the movement was the late 1980s and early 1990s, before the publication of this document; and second, in my extensive involvement in the movement (writing, conference presentations, talking to local groups, and so on) I rarely came across this document. But – because the writer has no real understanding or involvement in the movement, he uses for his very negative critique of the movement a document that, while representing many of the beliefs of these involved in the movement, was not instrumental in its development and progress.

Kay William’s Book

This book is an interesting take on the movement (2006). It may even have value from its biased perspective. But it does not represent an objective analysis of the grass-roots dynamism of the movement: no academic document to date does. And I think this is one of the problems: there is no true record of the movement in academic writings. If academics really want to study the movement, they need to collect, achieve, and analyze the hundreds of newsletters and thousands of articles generated by local support groups, and interview the leaders of these very diverse and dynamic groups (not all of whom were White women, despite the claims of Ms Williams!)

And Kay Williams makes the same mistake most observers of the movement make, namely, that the only goal of the movement was to change the U.S. Census categories and subsequent federal school forms. While each support group had its own goals and mission, they were much broader than this one, albeit very important, goal (Brown & Douglas, 2003; Wardle, 2004).

Newt Gingrich and the Conservative Right

Many critics of the multiracial movement have used Newt Gingrich’s support of a multiracial category on the 2000 Census as proof of the movement’s anti-progressive and anti-Civil Rights agenda (Elam, 2009; Spencer, 2010; Williams, 2006). While I have addressed the issue of the support of Civil Rights by the movement in another place, rather than question the meaning of conservative support of a multiracial category, these intellectual critics might ask themselves why the traditional Civil Rights groups (NAACP, La Raza, Asian American groups) vigorously opposed a multiracial category on the census (Root, 1996; Williams, 2006), and why multiracial children and families are still invisible in most school curricula and textbooks? After all, to have the U.S. government accurately record one’s identity would seem to be a basic civil right.

Further, any scholar of liberation movements worldwide is well aware that these movements often produce what appears at the time to be strange bedfellows.

Visual Images

In her chapter in Identity in Education (2009), Elam argues that some of the more popular books about the multiracial movement, “are filled to the margin with middle-class studio portraits of interracial couples and school pictures of their light-skinned, well-groomed children…” (p. 135). While this is not a correct observation, that is not the point. Anyone who has worked with book and magazine publishers knows that the publisher – along with their art director - dictates the visual images used on book covers (for marketing purposes). For example, for an article I wrote about multiracial children that was published in an education magazine, the artist illustrated it with stereotypical, token images of children representing single-race groups: White, Black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian!

However, who can blame these authors for wanting to present multiracial and multiethnic people as normal, after the academic world has historically, systemically and aggressively represented multiracial people as physically, morally, intellectually, sexually and emotional crippled, and, in many cases, continues to do so? After all, the academic community coined the term, Marginal Man, brought us eugenics, and some still use the term mulatto.

Over-Estimate the Relevance of the University Classroom

Elam writes, “I suggested at the onset of this chapter that the classroom is pivotal to driving our understanding of mixed-race” (p. 145). Because of the context of the chapter, she means the college classroom.

I obviously disagree.

This is the arrogance of academia. Our understanding of mixed-race in this country is going to be determined by the real issues faced by real multiracial families, children and adults in their daily lives. Of most importance, many of these multiracial individuals who end up in university classrooms will - as they already have – force these classrooms into a massive paradigm shift in the way they discuss race and identity. The pivotal force will be the influence of these multiracial students on the university classroom!

Use of Critical Theory to Deconstruct Mixed-Race

Critical theory uses the concepts of power, privilege and oppression in the study of individuals and society. It views White, heterosexual males as the powerful oppressors; women, people of color, and those with alternative sexual orientations as lacking power and as the oppressed. While this approach is seriously flawed (i.e. women are gaining considerable power in many places, and, at least in my home state of Colorado, gays have considerable power and prestige), it is an approach that simply does not work when examining the mixed-race construct. This is because people who are mixed race – including the most powerful man in the world, the president of the U.S.- are often products of competing power orientations. Is a mixed-race person of Black and White heritage powerful because of his White background, or oppressed because of his Black background? Or both (or, to perpetuate a deeply engrained myth, confused?) And is the relationship between his parents an unequal power relationship by definition? If this is the case, we are then back to the ideal that all interracial relationships are somehow dysfunctional.

Using the Wrong Lens

All the authors discussed in this article believe that, as one author derisively states, “the multiracial identity movement (his moniker) focuses on the self-esteem of is members at the expense of a true declaration against racial inequality in this country” (Spencer, 2010, p. 158). We are accused, at best, of relegating our responsibility in the fight for racial (and gender) equality, and, at worst of being impediments to that struggle (Elam, 2009).

But the problem is that these academic writers de-emphasize and totally ignore the issues most important to us – the constant harassment, belittling, and plain ignoring of our families and children by teachers, administrators, psychologists, social workers, counselors, multicultural educators, and single-race students and parents. Where is the criticism of the extremely vulgar sexual comments made about Mariah Carey and Black men by Sandra Bernhard, comments no-one would dare to make if she (Mariah) were Black (Sleeter, 2003, p. 312)? Not only is there no condemnation of these remarks, but Caroline Sleeter actually decides to repeat them in this academic book, and Elam (2009) continues this Freudian analysis of the sexual attraction of mixed-race women, only she presents them as the “fantasy of the [White] male editors” (p. 135).

These writers blindly ignore the realities of multiracial families, children, and adults trying to live normal and productive lives in 21st Century America.

Caught in Racial Orthodoxy

One of the more surprising things about academic protestations against the new mixed-race consciousness is their total inability to view race from any position other than the traditional, orthodox American (U.S.) perspective. For example, James and Cherry Banks (2004) claim in their book that in America, individuals do not have the option to make a multiracial identity choice. One of the major goals of the multiracial movement is to blur the hard lines between races, what Maria Root calls racial borders (1996). We believe that not only does a mixed-race construct change our view of people of color in this country, but also of White people. Globally, White people include Italians, Turks, Middle easterners, Spaniards and Portuguese (who are genetically influenced by Moors from N. Africa) - including Spanish and Portuguese in S. American countries - and other people with less than pure White skin. It’s only in America that we have this racist notion that White must somehow remain pure (and in Japan, but that’s a different discussion!). Thus, in their chapter on multiracial identity, Rockquemore and Brunsma (2010) label a group of students in their study with the moniker of honoree White. “We consider those within our sample who identify as biracial, those who have multiple and shifting racial identities, and those who claim no racial identity as ‘honorary whites’” (p. 183). What’s going on here? Why cannot these children claim to be multiracial, White, or, as Root suggests (1996), have multiple and shifting identities if they so choose? Who made these writers the arbitrators of racial identity – and, ironically, the protectors of the pure White race? Of course, the author’s argue these students cannot make these choices because ‘White society denies them access because of their phenotype - skin color, hair types, etc’ (2010, p. 183). But I suggest its not “White society” that is doing this, rather, its this current crop of multicultural educators and experts. Outside of the U.S. there are many people who choose identities that do not match the traditional, orthodox American racial perspective.

Thus the critics of the new multiracial consciousness are deeply wedded to the old racial paradigms, and are unable to change, or more importantly, to allow others to change!

Conclusion

There is currently a trend by academic writers to push back against the strides made by the multiracial movement in the United States. This push back is driven by ivory tower academics, who have no real understanding of the multiracial movement, and no real appreciation of the difficulties these children, families, and individuals still face in this country (from all single-race groups). They expect multiracial people to be advocates for other minority-rights efforts, and aggressively criticize them when they inaccurately perceive them to be soft on Civil Rights. Furthermore, because they lack a true understanding of this grassroots’ movement, they use the wrong documents and historical events for their analysis. These critics also over-emphasize the role of the university classroom in the advancement of multiracial identity and equality. And, finally, they don’t understand that the major purpose of the movement is to enable multiracial families, individuals and children to live normal, productive lives without continual harassment and belittling from others - including academics!

References

Adekunle, J. O. & Williams, H. V. (2010)(Eds.). Color struck: Essays on race and ethnicity in global perspective. Lanham, MA: University Press of America.

Banks, J. A., & Banks, C. A. M. (2004)(Eds.). Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.

Brown. N. G. & Douglass, R. E. (2003). Evolution of multiracial organizations: Where we have been and where we are going. In L. I. Winters & H. L. Debose (Eds.), New faces in a changing America: Multiracial identity in the 21st Century (pp.111-124). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Elam, M. (2009). The mis-education of mixed race. In S. Sanchez-Casal & A. A. Macdonald (Eds.), Identity in the 21st Century (pp. 131-150). New York: Macmillan.

Root, M. P. P. (1996). A Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People. In M. P. P. Root (Ed.), The multiracial experience: Racial borders as the new frontier (pp. 3-14). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Rockquemore, K. A., & Brunsma, D. L. (2010). Whiteness reconstructed: Multiracial identity as a category of “New White”. In J. O. Adekunle and H. V. Williams (Eds.), Color struck (pp. 173-186). New York: University Press of America,

Sanchez-Casal, S. & Macdonald, A. A. (2009)(Eds.). Identity in the 21st century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Sleeter, C. A. (2003). The hazards of visibility: “Biracial” women, media images, and narratives of identity. In L. I. Winters & H. L. Debose (Eds.), New Faces in a changing America (pp. 301-322). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Spencer, R. (2010). Militant multiraciality: Rejecting race and rejecting the conveniences of complicity. In J. O. Adekunle & H. V. Williams (Eds.), Color struck (pp.155-172). New York: University Press of America.

Wardle, F. (2004). History of the contemporary multiracial movement, Part 1. http://thestudyofracialism.org/about130.html Retrieved May, 2010.

Williams, K. (2006). Mark one or more. Civil Rights in multiracial America. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

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francis April 23rd, 2011

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francis April 2nd, 2009

As the American population is becoming more and more accepting of interracial relationships and multiracial identities, the academic community is leading the opposition to the progress of the multiracial movement. This opposition is manifest in a number of different ways, 1) multicultural education textbooks, articles and conferences simply ignore this population, 2) there is a group of university professors who stridently and unrelentingly publish articles and books opposing all aspects of the movement, and 3) university publishing presses publish these aggressive anti-multiracial tomes.

Invisibility

I have written extensively about the total omission of multiracial issues in almost all multicultural textbooks, articles and even diversity conferences. Recently I examined 12 child development textbooks with a copyright date of 2004 or later. In all but two of these texts the topic of interracial families and multiracial children was ignored, despite the fact that the 2000 census allowed individuals and families to choose more than one racial or ethnic background, and despite the fact that most of these books discussed in some detail issues unique to children who belong to a traditional American single-race group. Only one of the books gave the topic any real, sincere coverage (Wardle, 2008).

In simply ignoring interracial families, multiracial children and adults, these academics reinforce the construct that racial and ethnic diversity only involves single races and ethnicities. Further, they make the hugely inaccurate (and somewhat arrogant) assumption that the entire word views human diversity through the simplistic and highly political lens of the traditional five US census categories. Even in their 2004 edition of the book, Multicultural Education, James and Cherry Banks and Banks include the quote, “In the United States……..an individual with any acknowledged or publicly known African ancestry is considered back” (p. 18). James and Curry Banks are considered the founding parents of the multicultural education movement in this country! A few years ago James Banks edited a Multicultural Handbook. Of the 42 articles included in the handbook, one was on multiracial issues (while, course, most of the others expressed positions that denied the very idea of a multiracial identity within their arguments and polemics, and some even expressed the need for solidarity and unity within single race groups).

Recently I reviewed a book on juvenile crime in this country. The introduction included a very well written piece about how our 5 census categories simply do not accurately portray the diversity of people in this country today. But then the authors declared that, despite this problem, they were nonetheless going to use these government categories throughout their book! Most academic books, however, don’t even acknowledge the obsolete and arbitrary nature of these government categories: they simply assume they are accurate, meaningful, and inclusive of everyone in the US (and often even the world).

Academic Book Writers

During the last 15-20 years many books have been published that, in a variety of ways, attack the multiracial movement. These attacks use a variety of arguments, including the proposition that the multiracial movement is a right-wing conspiracy driven by single, white suburban women (Williams, 2006), that the proponents of a multiracial identity are self-appointed “experts” who are only selfishly concerned with the psychological welfare of their own multiracial children (Spencer, 1997), that white mothers of multiracial children advocate for a multiracial identity because they want to give their children access to white privilege, while being ashamed of the black heritage (I wonder why they pick on white women so much?), that the multiracial movement is a conspiracy to weaken the political and social power of blacks in this country, and finally, even if it is not a conspiracy, that the very act of individuals choosing a multiracial identity both psychologically, socially and politically will result in deep retreats in the black struggle and the contemporary civil rights movement. However, all these positions are based on a fundamental belief that because historically and legally people in this country with any black heritage were considered black, this construct of race should still apply to our contemporary understanding of the complex and ever-changing mixed-race experience in America

The writers of these attacks are all professors at major universities throughout this country, many of which are publicly funded. They teach in departments of African American Studies, Ethnic Studies, or other departments that perpetuate the traditional, singe-race/ethnicity, American view of racial diversity.

Thus it is not surprising that they take a single–race, anti-multiracial view of diversity. Their views remind me of an interview I conducted of Dr. Poussaint for a magazine some years ago. One of the questions I asked him was why he had changed his view of multiracial children from one of being highly critical (the standard academic view that these children were physically, emotionally, socially and morally weak), to a much more positive view. He replied that as a medical student in graduate school he had been taught all these negative perceptions of multiracial children, and that he only changed his mind after he did his own research of potentially highly successful multiracial college students (Poussaint, 1987).

Thus it is not surprising that adults who themselves were taught that multiracial children are somehow marginal in every way would teach and write this same nonsense. What is surprising is that within the academic community they experience absolutely no challenge or disagreement to this view.

Book Publishers

Who, you might ask, are publishing these books that attack the multiracial movement? Ironically, almost all of them are published by university presses – University of Illinois, Pennsylvania State University, New York University Press, SUNY Press, the University of Michigan and University of Minnesota presses. I say ironically, because the very populace that is increasingly accepting of interracial families and multiracial children – a growing number of whom do not fit into our neat racial boxes - fund these presses through their state taxes

I am not sure why these university presses are publishing these books, other than it’s a part of the institutional structure of how university professors have more access to these publishers than do other writers. Maybe the directors of the university publishers believe that, since these authors teach in or are department heads in major universities, their scholarship must be good and their views sound.

Conclusion

Multicultural and diversity experts talk and write a great deal about institutional racism. It seems to me the concentrated attack by university professors on the multiracial movement through the publication of books and journal articles, and presentations at diversity conferences, are a very clear example of institutional racism. Somewhat ironically the institutions (which pay the salaries of these professors and subsidize the university presses) are funded by the average American citizen.

I wonder if they are aware of this travesty?

References

Banks, J. and Banks, C.A. M. (2004). Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Spencer, J. M. (1997). The new colored people. The mixed-race movement in America. New York: New York University Press.

Wardle, F. (2007). Multiracial children in early childhood textbooks. Early Childhood Education Journal, 35 (1) 253-259

Williams, K. M. (2006) Mark one or more. Civil rights in multiracial America. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

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francis July 4th, 2008

by

Francis Wardle, PhD
(Prepared for Red Rocks Community College Week of the Young Child, April, 2008)

In today’s society professionals working with children want to provide what is best for them. This requires them to be culturally responsive in their approach to children and their families. Part of being culturally responsive is to be knowledgeable and sensitive to issues of race and ethnicity. However, this is difficult to do, because there are many contractions in the way we view race and ethnicity in the United States today. These contradictions include,

1.Biologically, race does not exist. The genome project and anthropologists have established beyond a doubt that race does not exist as a biological reality. According to Templeton, (2002), “Human races do not exist under the traditional concept of a subspecies as being a geographically circumscribed population showing genetic differentiation (p. 51). Further, he goes on, “All the genetic evidence shows that there never was a split or separation of the races…..” (p.51)

2.The fastest growing group of children in the US is self-identified as multiethnic and multiracial (Root, 2004). In the 2000 U.S. Census, over 6 million people identified as having two or more races; further, the majority of these were under 18 years old (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001).

3.As we expand our view of humanity to include other global societies, we discover that their views of race are very different from ours. For example, in Brazil there is a very large number of mixed-race people who identity as mixed-race, and are identified this way by their government (Carvalho-Silva et al, 2000); in Belize several of the traditional groups of people are, in fact, mixed race (black/Maya Indian; black/British; Carib, etc.)

4.Increased immigration has brought people to this country who do not fit into our broad racial categories, and who do not subscribe to our traditional view of race and ethnicity. These include,

francis February 10th, 2008

by

Francis Wardle, PhD

In my writings, both here and in articles and books that I have written, I am very critical of the current approach to multicultural education taught to early childhood and k-12 teachers. This approach is directly presented in a variety of textbooks, articles, and conference sessions, and is embedded within a vast array of child development, education, psychology and sociology textbooks.

As a critic of the current multicultural orthodoxy, it is my responsibility to present an alternative view. This alternative view is presented in the enclosed document, which was developed for a book on early childhood approaches that was requested by a publisher. The publisher later cancelled the book, so I am including a chapter from the book here. Feel free to use it for instructional purposes without having to get permission first.

Click here to access the manuscript.

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francis January 9th, 2008

by

Francis Wardle, PhD

A few miles beyond the brilliant white beaches and cobalt blue ocean of Maceio, a tourist mecca on the Brazilian NE coast, is Escola Estrela do Mar (the Star Fish School). This store-front school sits next to a noisy local freight train that runs alongside a road. The road is shaded by huge tropical trees. Stretching up a steep bank behind the school is a motley collection of shacks and dilapidated homes that make up this favela. The green banana palms, flowering trees and colorful washing hanging out to dry, masks the harshness and depravity of this poverty.

Twenty-seven children, age 4 to 8 years, attend the school. In numbers and physical size the school is small. But in hopes and dreams it is huge!

All the children come from local favela families. All these families are very poor, many have no fathers, and some lack both biological parents. Drug abuse, teen pregnancy, alcoholism, and domestic violence are common. All the children are children of color - various shades of brown, with tight, curly hair - the girls in carefully woven plaits - what the Brazilians call mulato (mixed European-Black) and moreno.

Need for the School
The school is the dream-child of Washington, DC raised David, and his Sao Paolo wife, Claudia. Their dream is to prove to the Brazilian establishment – particularly the educational establishment – that low-income children of color can be educated and can succeed.

On my last visit to Brazil in November 2007, David and Claudia invited me to visit their school to observe and provide some professional feedback regarding their methods, approaches, and practices. I had the pleasure of meeting them and observing in the school. In my real life I am a professor of education

Brazil provides free public education to elementary-age children. And recently the federal government passed a law that pays (very little) parents when their children attend the local school. But, based on my experience visiting a variety of local public schools in several Brazilian states and cities, the quality of these schools is from poor to horrendous. In many cases three separate sessions are provided within the same building each day (thus the children attend about 3 hours-a-day), the teachers are often very over-worked and demoralized, there are little if any basic resources, and the only teaching method is direct instruction to large classes.

And these are schools that receive most of the federal dollars allotted to them. In Alagoas state, where Escola Estrela do Mar is located, most of the money never ever gets to the schools. It ends up in an ongoing nightmare of government corruption.

Dream School
With this educational backdrop and the context of abject poverty and racism, David and Claudia are running their dream school. It’s not an idea, a pie in the sky dream, or a utopian social plan; it’s a three-year reality.

Their effort reminds me of Dr. Maria Montessori’s Casa di Bambini. This was the school she established in the slums of Rome. She was asked by city officials to educate children from the slums, whom the educational establishment had deemed “uneducatable”.

While much of Europe and the US believe that all children can benefit from a free, public education – note the IDEA act in the US that requires children with disabilities to receive an equal education – many developing countries reserve their best educational effort (in money and human capitol) to educating children the society believes can succeed and contribute most. In Brazil these children tend to be middle class and wealthy children of European descent.

David and Claudia believe otherwise, and have set out to prove their beliefs to the world. And, just like Maria Montessori, they way well succeed!

Escola Estrela do Mar
On entering the school I am greeted by heat and noise! The very small area reverberates with children’s voices, and reflects the heat of a NE Brazilian midday. The classrooms are small and cramped. But the children are eagerly trying to follow the teachers and learn; the teachers eager to teach. There are quick smiles, verbal and physical praise, and lots of encouragement “to try again!”

I visit a computer lab, English class, and a class in ecology. The school also teaches math, science, Portuguese, history, swimming and character education. They will be adding art, music and dance. And the school provides three healthy meals each day. On a regular basis field trips are taken to expose the children to the world beyond their favela and to show them a variety of professional and skilled occupations and role models; further, professionals and tradesmen visit the school to talk to the students and encourage their learning.

At the back of the school is a very small area for playing games – mostly the favorite of most Brazilian children – futebol.

The teachers have the required college training. But, much more importantly to David and Claudia, they have the enthusiasm needed to be good teachers, and they possess a deep belief that these children can and will succeed.

New School Building
Later that day I have the pleasure of visiting the new school building. This building, to be opened in 2008, has a totally opposite feeling from the current school – large, open, cool, serene, and nestled between a variety of trees and shrubs.

Like most Brazilian schools and NGOs, the center of the building is a large, outdoor courtyard. All classrooms, labs and other rooms feed into this open area. It will be the children’s playground.

At the back and on the two sides of the building are gardens, trees, shrubs and open spaces. These areas will all be used for a variety of ecological, nature and science education, along with growing vegetables and fruits for consumption by the children. The children will be able to enjoy the wonderful outdoors that is one of the rich resources of Brazil.

When the school moves to the new building the student population will increase to over 100 children. But the challenges will not be erased. These include,

· Finding additional financial support to make the school sustainable;
· Convincing local educators and business leaders of the integrity of the school;
· Crystallizing an educational approach that combines high academic rigor and expectations with the arts and ecological equation;
· Integrating more child-directed and child-centered learning into the overall instructional approach;
· Formalizing their approach to parent involvement;
· Integrating local and Brazilian culture – including Amerindian and Afro-Brazilian culture, into the curriculum;
· Providing quality, ongoing training for the teaching staff;
· Creating formal and informal relationships with both Brazilian and US schools of higher education – with internships, classroom volunteers, and possibly study-abroad exchange programs resulting;
· Instituting an ongoing research project.

These challenges are extreme. Yet David, Claudia and the staff seem up to the task. I support their efforts and will watch their progress with anticipation.

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francis August 3rd, 2007

Why Diversity Experts Hate the Multiracial Movement

By

Francis Wardle

For some time I have been very confused with the total lack of inclusion of multiracial and multiethnic children and their families by so-called diversity experts. In my Hall of Fame/Hall of Shame column, I describe a © 2008 book, whose subtitle is, honoring differences, that totally ignores the topic (Gonzalez-Mena). I am publishing an article in the Early Childhood Education Journal in which I reviewed child development college textbooks with copyright dates of 2004 and later. The article shows that only 2 of the twelve books that I reviewed address multiracial and multiethnic children in any detail (Wardle, in press). Recently another © 2008 book on diversity for k -12 teachers came across my desk (Spadlin & Parsons). It too totally ignores the topic.

How can books that claim to honor differences totally ignore multiethnic and multiracial children? In the introduction to Diversity in Early Care and Education: Honoring Differences (2008), Janet Gonzalez-Mena states, “this book is about honoring and respecting diversity” (p. ix). Later, ironically, she uses the heading, What Are the Effects of Being Ignored?
Yet her book, along with almost all diversity books, articles and conference presentations about diversity, totally ignore the over 6.8 million children and adults who self-identified as mixed-race in the last U. S. Census.

What’s going on here? It seems to me there are three fundamental reasons that multicultural and diversity experts hate the entire mixed-race concept: 1) they view society as a salad bowl of culturally distinct groups, 2) they are myopically American in their view of diversity, with no understanding of diversity outside of our borders, and 3) their view of social justice requires a single race/ethnicity view of the world.

Tossed Salad

Jane Gonzalez-Mena presents a scenario in her book in which babies are cared for by their Japanese mothers and European-American (white) caregivers. She then writes, “Think about what might happen if the babies were handled some of the time by European-American [white] mothers and some of the time by Japanese mothers……. instead of becoming bicultural, they might become confused about how they are supposed to be. If this is the case the environments with the foreign mothers might be called culturally assaultive” (p. 15 –16).

Bingo! The old, “they will be confused” stereotype!

Diversity experts deeply believe that each individual is the product of a group – what William Cross calls reference group orientation. The great psychologist Erikson also discussed this issue when he examined identity development during adolescence, and described the functions of in-group and out-group belonging. If our race, ethnicity, gender and other identities are defined by the groups we associate and hang around with, as diversity experts believe, then what is the reference group of multiracial children? They simply don’t have one!

However, because the biological basis of race and ethnicity has been debunked by the genome project, diversity experts now talk about cultural groups. To this end Janet Gonzalez-Mena has a section in her book on African American culture, Chinese culture, Hispanic culture (Latino culture), Japanese culture, Russian culture, and so on. Further, because these experts are about “honoring differences” they see a need to improve the self-esteem of children from diverse cultural backgrounds. And to do this they advocate elevating the stature and respect of each minority cultural group. Some years ago the Sesame Street TV program for preschool children presented a series of programs on diversity – known as the Race Project. It soon became evident to me that all of the diversity included in the program was about same-race and ethnicity. So I called the main researcher for the program, who admitted as much. She then declared that including multiracial and multiethnic concepts in this view of diversity “was just too complicated” (Wardle, 1994).

If we are going to look at each specific cultural group and encourage the separate empowerment of each group, as diversity experts do, then including multiracial and multiethnic children requires us to look at all the various combination of each of these groups - and this is, “much too difficult to do!”

It should be noted here, as a matter of intellectual honesty, that the group approach to diversity - African Americans, Latinos, Russians etc., - is a highly non-diverse approach! Lets just take Brazilians, who are often lumped in under Hispanics, until people understand that not only do they speak Portuguese, but also that the Spanish are their historical enemies! Further, Brazil’s population is made-up of Afro-Brazilians, Amerindians (of many different tribes), Europeans (German, Portuguese, Italians, Scandinavian, etc); Middle Eastern, and Japanese, along with a rich and acknowledged mixture of all of these populations.

American View of Diversity

Just yesterday I read an article that claimed the US is the most multicultural of all nations. This is not only untrue – particularly if we consider multiracial and multiethnic identities as part of diversity - but it is also a typically American view of the rest of the world (we always must be the best of everything!). Several weeks ago there was an article in our local paper about race and racism in Brazil. It was very critical of the racism in contemporary Brazilin society; but of most interest was the belief expressed by the writer that Brazil should address this problem in exactly the same way that we in America are doing (as if we have solved the problem of racism in our country!)

There are many countries that have a rich history of embracing multiracial and multiethnic people. Because of my own experiences, Brazil comes to mind. There are many others! But, because our history includes the one-drop rule (to prevent children of slaves and slave-owners from becoming free), diversity experts expect all other countries to follow this single -race approach to diversity. It is edifying to note that not only has Brazil never had the one-drop rule, but their laws regarding children of slaves and slave owners were very different from ours.

Another ironic twist to this American myopia is the Hispanic/Latino view. When I mentioned the Hispanic ethnic group to a researcher studying the origins of race in Brazil, he calmly replied, “ah yes, that is an American invention”. As I have pointed out already, in Brazil people of Spanish heritage belong to the European group: Brazil’s ruling class. In most of Latin America (Mexico, Guatemala, Columbia, Peru, Bolivia), the ruling class is Latino, and the lower classes Native Americans.

This myopic view of diversity prevents American multicultural experts from recognizing the narrow-mindedness of a single-race and ethnicity view of diversity. They simply see diversity through a single-race prism. While there are composers, authors, architects and inventors from the world over who celebrate their multiracial identity, we in this country still insist on a single-race identity, which must be the identity of the minority parent, or parent of lowest status.

Social Justice and Critical Theory

Postmodern views of all things academic have taken over our colleges and universities. This is particularly true of departments of race, ethnicity, and diversity. Within the field of racial studies, this view is represented by a struggle between the haves and the have-nots, the oppressors and the oppressed, the privileged and the non-privileged. Experts in this field therefore study diversity in terms of power: who has it, who doen’t have it, and how those who have it keep down those who do not. They view those in power as dominating and abusing those without power, and consider schools and early childhood programs to be agents of the oppressor.

While this is a neat sociological model for looking at race in society, any discussion of multiracial identity – especially if a part of that person’s heritage is white - obviously destroys this entire concept! If a person’s heritage is black and white, which group do they belong to? Since the theory of hypodescent has a strict hierarchy of race and status – from white to black - (as does the critical theory view of gender, disability, sexual orientation, etc), any recognition of a multiracial or multiethnic person totally upsets these neat formals.
Conclusion

Universally multicultural and diversity experts ignore multiracial and multiethnic children and people as part of the diversity community. This is astonishing to me, until I examine the theoretical prisms through which these experts see the world, and see the world of diversity in particular. There are three central reasons why multiracial and multiethnic identity is not included within the diversity construct: viewing multicultural society as a salad bowl of distinct, autonomous ethnic and racial groups (as a reaction to the dreaded melting pot), 2) viewing diversity from a single, myopic American (US) perspective that does not recognize how the rest of the world views and practices diversity, and 3) relying on a critical theory approach to societal change that requires each race and ethnic group (along with gender, disability, economic class and sexual orientation) to be a distinctively separate entity within a power-oppressed hierarchy. What is most disturbing about this reality is that it shows diversity experts lack the ability to think critically, creativity, and outside of traditional ideas and concepts. It is, by definition, intellectually very conservative.

References

Gonzalez-Mena, J. (2008). Diversity in Early care and education: Honoring differences. (5th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill Companies.

Spradlin, L. K., & Parson, R.D. (2008). Diversity matters: Understanding diversity in schools. Belmont, CA: Thompson Higher Education.

Wardle (1994). What about other children in the neighborhood? New People. 4 (5), 10-19.

Wardle, F. (In press). Multiracial and multiethnic children in child development textbooks. Early Childhood Education Journal.

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francis March 12th, 2007

This ever-expanding column will highlight organizations, individuals and publications that support our struggle to empower multiracial and multiethnic children and their families, and those that do not. Obviously the Hall of Fame will include those that I believe are affirmative; the Hall of Shame those that object, devalue, or impede our struggle.

Hall of Fame

My People Are…….Youth Pride in Mixed Heritage, a new film (CD) and training document developed and produced by the Multiethnic Education Program (see links).

The film is a fast moving, colorful, well produced presentation by a wonderfully diverse group of multiracial and single-race adolescents. The focus of the film is the need to adjust our thinking – especially in our schools and our curricula – to change to meet the many needs of the ever-increasing number of multiethnic and multiracial children in schools. Further, the film continually challenges our societal, academic and often human need to place all people into 5 singe-race, arbitrarily constructed “racial boxes”.

Each adolescent reports struggles they have had with people unwilling to acknowledge and celebrate their full heritage and identity; further, many talk about pride in their full racial background, and also the discovery of parts of their background denied to them through a single-race approach to identity.

This exploration of pride in mixed-heritage is conducted through group activates, dance, many individual expressions of frustration and hope, and symbolic use of boxes and other props. The target audience is other adolescents – of all races and ethnicities – but this training CD and brochure works for training teachers, in service training, college classes, multiracial activities and conferences, and local support groups. Psychologists, school psychologists, social workers and counselors would also greatly benefit from the training.

Finally, at several times throughout the film, students ask the provocative question, “but why can’t we just be part of the human race?”

Hall of Shame

Diversity in Early Care and Education: Honoring Differences (5th ed), by Janet Gonzalez-Mena. Published by McGraw-Hill, 2008.

This book, as the title implies, is supposed to honor differences. It’s a book for people preparing to be teachers of young children (age infant to 3rd grade). It covers race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and language diversity. But as far as I can tell it totally and absolutely misses anyone of multiracial or multiethnic heritage. It also seems to me to lack any international perspective (almost all diversity texts are hopelessly and myopically American in focus).

In the introduction for the book the author claims that it is inappropriate to structure a book on diversity into traditional groups such as African American, Hispanic, etc., and that this approach denies the “diversity within diversity”. Yet these very groups – and others, such as “Chinese culture”, “Latino culture”, “Japanese culture”, “Lakota and Navaho culture” (Dine) etc., are liberally scattered throughout the index (there are 10 listings under African American culture alone).Yet, for the life of me, I cannot find interracial, biracial, mixed-race, multiethnic, multiethnic, etc., anywhere in the book. And I’ve tried!

What’s worse is that the author has made the popular shift from race to culture: now it’s the African American culture; the Hispanic culture, the Lakota culture. Anyone who personally knows more than one African American and more than one Latino knows that placing everyone in one box is stereotypical at best, and racist at worst.

There are many problems with this book’s view of diversity, mainly its stereotypical view of people and cultures, and its belief that only white folks can do wrong, and minorities can do no wrong. But my issue here has to do with a total lack of any information for child care providers and teachers about how to work effectively with interracial and interethnic families and their children. None!

But why no mention of mixed-race? I just talked to a young lady today whose mother is Portuguese and father Indian (Asian), who grew up in Malaysia. This is not at all uncommon, especially outside of America, yet under Ms Gonzalez-Mena’s view of diversity, this lady and the millions like her don’t exist (or are marginal). How is this “honoring differences?”

Teaching Tolerance Magazine, published by the Southern Law Poverty Center.

Many of you are probably aware of this magazine, devoted to schools and teachers. It has an excellent reputation for providing teachers with materials and activities to enable them to explore all kinds of diversity in their classrooms.

Except mixed-race diversity!

For several years I communicated with the editor of Teaching Tolerance. I was interested in publishing an article that celebrated multiracial identity, advocated for the rights of children and parents to self-identify as mixed, and to challenge this country’s fixation on a single-race view of everyone – including the almost fanatical adherence to the use of the federal forms in schools. I wrote several pieces (I have worked with multiracial adolescents, and have raised my own four children), so I know something about the issues multiracial and multiethnic students face in our schools.

But no, he would never approve publishing anything this hard-hitting, and I finally gave up!

Even when the new forms were developed for the 2000 census,
Teaching Tolerance was very lukewarm about their creation, and gave lots of space for people who felt self-identification of mixed-race children would somehow weaken the fight for justice of single-race groups in this country (a very popular theme in many circles).

It is very clear to me that, while Teaching Tolerance does a wonderful job of providing resources and ideals to help teachers address a range of singe-race and other single-concept diversity issues, they have not progressed to a deep understanding of the destructive force of demanding that multiracial children select only part of their heritage, and they truly do not understand any multidimensional diversity issues. Finally, they seem beholden to single-race advocates, and are unwilling to challenge the pervasive orthodoxy of the single-race view of culture and diversity so prevalent in this country, our schools and colleges.

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francis December 26th, 2006

By Francis Wardle

I am visiting a public school in one of the many suburbs that circumscribe the federal city of Brasilia. In Brazil the wealthy and middle-class live in town (or, as in Brasilia, in satellite towns), the poor live in the suburbs. Thus, this is a poor elementary school. The principal greets me enthusiastically, and I watch the children’s morning exercises and singing – lead by the teachers. The school serves 5, 6 and 7 year-old children. After the initial activity, all the children gather in a large area with one side totally open to the elements – and to people from the community who gather to enjoy the upcoming presentation. On the stage there is a set of a castle; to its left is a woman with a guitar. After one of the 4 actors gives a short introductory speech, the action begins.

The play is a collection of vignettes taken from a variety of popular fairy tales, including Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and many others. Between each scene the women plays her guitar and sings a beautiful song. Many of the teachers join in the chorus; apparently it’s a well known song. Large puppets that are attached to the actor’s bodies and feet provide the action. There are also a few props, including a ship (for the pirate), a beautiful, blue butterfly, and some cute green bugs. The presentation is very well done, and captivates the children, even though it is quite long by American standards.

While I watch the action on the set, I am really more interested in watching the children. They are a rich combination of browns – brown skin and brown hair. The girls have their hair arranged in a variety of styles: tight braids held with colorful barrettes, curly hair loosely framing their faces, and two simply braids. All the children have big, brown eyes, and enthusiastic, open faces.

The plot is the old standby of a beautiful princess looking for a husband. She is visited by a variety of suitors, including a black prince who is quite ugly and engages in very stereotypical behavior - dancing and being silly. Finally the princess chooses a pirate to marry, so that she can travel around the world.

While the presentation is extremely well done, and the children and teachers (and community members) really enjoy it, I am shocked by the racism. The princess is a beautiful white woman with long, blond hair, and big, sad blue eyes. She ends up marrying a white pirate with blue eyes.

As we continue to tour the school I notice the four actors sitting together on a bench. Since I am doing research on Brazilian schools and race in Brazil, I muster the courage to ask my translator if he would pose a question to the actors for me. He asks my question:

“All of the little girls watching the play have beautiful brown skin, brown hair and brown eyes. Why did you make the princess a blue-eyed blond? Why did you tell each of these young girls that they couldn’t be a princess?” (I could have added, “and why did you tell each of the boys they could not be a successful suitor?”)

They gave me several answers:

1) In the four years we have given this presentation, you are the first person to ask this question.

2) We tried to change the traditional fairly tales. This is why we included a Negro (black) prince, and why the princess selected a pirate, so she could travel and see the world.

3) This princess is the symbol of female beauty in Brazil.

According to Gilmar, my translator, they were quite upset with my question. I was quite perturbed and appalled by their answers.

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francis November 24th, 2006

By Francis Wardle, PhD

For the first time in a long while, the 2000 census allowed respondents to check “more than one race”. Over 6.8 million people (2.4%) made this choice - many of them people less than 18 years of age. Based on this information, one would assume that college textbooks and journals that explore diversity, tolerance, and ethnic sensitivity, would cover issues around multiracial children in great detail.

But no!

All the books and journals that I have recently looked at view diversity only in single-race terms. I teach child psychology, human development, and early childhood development, so I have many opportunities to address this issue. I am also always reviewing new textbooks to determine whether I need to change the books I use in my classes. Recently I reviewed ten books with 2004, 2005 and 2006 copyrights dates. But none of these books explore issues of multiracial identity, mixed-race children, and interracial families – including families with adopted multiracial children. A book entitled, Early Childhood Development: A Multicultural Approach (4th ed.)(2006) by Jeffrey Trawick-Smith, does not even include the words “multiracial”, “biracial” or “interracial” in its index! And this is a multicultural text! The book, Childhood: Voyages in Development (2nd ed.)(2006) by S. A. Rathus, claims, “Latino and Latina Americans …may be white, Black or Native American” (p. 26). Everyone knows that most Hispanic Americans are Mestizo – Indian and European – and many are multiracial (with some Black heritage)(Banks and Banks, 2004). And, while the entire November/December, 2005 issue of Young Children – the journal of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, is devoted to diversity, there is no mention anywhere in its pages about children with a multicultural or multiethnic identity (although more than 50% of the journal is dedicated to Latino/a children and family issues).

What’s going on here?

Why do textbooks and journals that address diversity refuse to include multiethnic and multiracial children? Why are academics who write about diversity fixated on seeing diversity only through a single-race prism? Since none of these authors actually mention multiracial children, they obviously do not discuss their reasons for omitting them. The closest statement I have found about the issue is in the book, Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives (5th ed), by James and Cherry Banks. In this book the authors write, “In the United States, where racial categories are well defined and highly inflexible, an individual with any acknowledged or publicly known African ancestry is considered Black” (page 18). The book has a copyright date of 2004; James Backs is considered “the father of multicultural education.”

So, since these authors do not tell us why they omit the fastest growing population of children in this country, I am left to come up with my own explanations.

Ignorance
Many writers of psychology, child development, and early childhood textbooks have no understanding of race and ethnicity. For example, many still claim that race is a biological construct and that people of the same race have the same biological characteristics (both are untrue); many believe that people of the same ethnic group must have the same religious background, home language, and universally common cultural values. We know there is more genetic and cultural diversity within groups than between them; for example, while my wife is considered African American, she is also an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Indian tribe, and she was raised Catholic.

One cannot expect writers who do not underhand race and ethnicity to understand multiracial and multiethnic concepts!

Group Think
Academics have totally adopted the notion of group politics. They insist on talking about ethnic and racial groups: African American, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, and white. They refuse to write about individuals. This is a direct result of the powerful influence in academia of sociology, sociology of education, cultural sociology, and social psychology. These disciplines focus solely on groups. The current thinking is that the only way to create change in this society and the world is through groups. And the more powerful the group, the more it has a chance to change society. Today’s academics do not believe individuals can impact societal change. An outgrowth of this belief is that anyone who weakens the power of a group weakens the ability of that group to produce positive social and political change. This is the explanation for the often bitter attracts on black conservatives; it is also the reason why academics insist on supporting the one-drop rule.

Political Correctness
It is not politically correct to acknowledge and celebrate multiracial identity in colleges and universities. I have a multiracial colleague who is a college professor. Her heritage includes African and Puerto Rican. When she is involved with Black groups in her university, she is harassed whenever she speaks in Spanish; when in the Hispanic faculty groups she is put-down when she brings up issues of concern for other minority groups, such as Indians and blacks. Group loyalty is vindictive and extreme (note the attracts by certain blacks on Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice). The belief is that only though group loyalty can underrepresented groups gain any power in this country. And anyone who celebrates their multiracial heritage - particularly if it includes their white background - is ‘sleeping with the enemy’.

Racial Divide
Multiracial and multiethnic children are the product of interracial and interethnic relationships. Academics seem to feel that recognizing these children as multiracial means that racism no longer exists. And the power of racial politics is based on racism. Thus academics are unwilling to recognize that, at least on a personal level, racial antagonism and hatred have in some cases been overcome. They believe that those of us who marry interracially are “colorblind” (a term I have often been accused of), and that being colorblind is a dangerous denial of racial hatred in this country and a diffusion of the power to create change.

It has always puzzled me that those of us who advocate for multiracial identity and recognition are accused of believing racism no longer exists. As a white man with a black wife and four beautiful multiracial children, I am extremely aware of the level of racism that still exists in this country!

The One-Drop Rule
The one-drop rule (anyone with any black heritage is black) was a racist rule created by the white ruling class to enforce the Jim Crow laws of the post Civil War era. After all, if you have one set of laws for white people, and one for black people, you then need a way to determine who is white and who is black. Later this law was expanded for all practical purposes to include any person of color; if a person’s heritage included more than one minority background, the rule of hypodescent applied (a person must accept the single identity of their heritage with the lowest status).

But today this racist rule is used to assert that anyone with any minority heritage must only identify with his/her minority background. This rule is accepted as the truth by all experts in diversity, multiculturalism and tolerance.

Unwilling to Change
Curiously, when it comes to understanding race and identity, academics are the last to be able to change. As I have mentioned in many of my articles, average people and interracial support groups are way ahead of academics in understanding that racial identity in this country has changed over the last 40 years. When it comes to race, academics are bent on maintaining the status quo because it serves their political and scholarly agendas. While they will come up with all sorts of rationalization for this, based on the evil white society, they steadfastly support an arbitrary government-imposed system of racial and ethnic labels. Naomi Zack has written convincingly about this intractability of academics who study race and racism. And the more liberal the academic, the more conservative they are in wanting to maintain rigid racial borders.

What Should We Do?
First, we must deeply understand the reluctance and even obstruction of the academic community in supporting the idea of a multiracial identity. Second, we must understand that when it comes to issues of race and ethnicity, academics are almost always wrong. Thirdly, we must own our own movement and our own growth and development, and not allow academics to define our issues and frame our progress. And finally, we must insist that at all levels – school forms, psychology theories, special education placement, social worker misinformation etc., our children have a right to celebrate their full multiracial identity, and that interracial parents have a right and responsibility to raise their children with pride in and acknowledgement of their full genetic, cultural and personal heritage. These issues are not open to debate, academic or otherwise.

Conclusion
Diversity and multicultural education are hot topics in academia. There are college departments for ethnic and cultural studies, classes for students, degrees devoted solely to ethnic studies, and regional, national and international conferences, scholarly journals, magazines, and textbooks all devoted to this topic. And all the content areas of psychology, education, sociology, anthology and early childhood educational address this topic; the disciplines of research, planning, demographics and other areas also cover diversity and multiculturalism in depth. Naturally, people believe that these purveyors of diversity and multiculturalism will be sympathetic and supportive of issues faced by multiracial people and children, including creating and maintaining a positive multiracial identity. But they are not. Advocates of diversity and multicultural education see diversity as the acceptance and tolerance of single-race and ethnic groups. They don’t support interracial families and multiracial children; some are even opposed in interracial marriage.

Thus it is left up to us – the newly emerged and ever-strengthening multiracial community - to advocate for ourselves and our children – in schools, on federal forms, in social work caseloads and in special education classes. We cannot – and must not - make the mistake of believing that multiculturalists and supporters of diversity support our efforts.

They don’t.

References

Banks, J. A., and Banks, C. A. M. (2004). Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Rathus, S. A. (2006). Childhood: Voyages in development (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Trawick-Smith, J. (2006). Early childhood education: A multicultural perspectives (4th ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall.

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