Multicultural Education

In his first year as a teacher in Arizona, University of Washington PhD student Lin Wu struggled to make genuine connections with his Mexican American students.

As a first-generation immigrant from China, Wu had personally experienced the challenges that accompany being accepted by U.S. mainstream culture. Unaware of the historical struggles that Chinese immigrants faced in the U.S., Wu found that he had suddenly become the “other.” It was this othering experience that initially prevented Wu from seeing beyond his own struggles.

For more than a quarter-century, the University of Washington’s Center for Multicultural Education has been a world leader in advancing multicultural education, producing landmark publications and educating a generation of influential scholars in the field.

That impact and the future of the center’s work were featured during its 30th symposium, “Commemorating the Past and Envisioning the Future: Making a Difference for 26 Years,” held on April 27. 

For the past 50 years, the University of Washington has helped lay the foundations for educators worldwide to think deeply about how to empower all students to become productive citizens.

On April 27, this work and the leadership of James A. Banks, Kerry and Linda Killinger Endowed Chair in Diversity Studies, will be celebrated during the UW Center for Multicultural Education’s 30th annual symposium.

University of Washington Professor James A. Banks, known widely as “the father of multicultural education,” will present the UW Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity’s (OMA&D) 14th annual Samuel E. Kelly Distinguished Faculty Lecture on April 13 in Kane Hall Room 220.

Banks is the Kerry and Linda Killinger Endowed Chair in Diversity Studies and founding director of the Center for Multicultural Education in the UW College of Education.

Growing up, Adaurennaya Onyewuenyi was a straight A student. She knew early on that college was in her future.

Yet navigating school didn’t come nearly as easy for her brothers and cousins, even though they were close in age and attended the same schools.

“From elementary school all the way through high school, they were getting punitive punishments that were more racialized,” Onyewuenyi said. “I wondered, ‘Why are the educational pathways and experiences so different between myself and my brothers and cousins?’”

For African-American students, data, alongside societal attitudes and stereotypes, often present a negative picture: a wide academic achievement gap separating them from their white peers. Higher rates of discipline and absenteeism. Discrimination by other students, teachers and the larger community. And just last summer, a study indicated that black girls, from an early age, are perceived as more aggressive and sexual – less innocent – than white girls.

While schools have too often reproduced inequalities in society, Django Paris believes in their potential to create a more equal and pluralist society.

This January, Paris will join the University of Washington College of Education as the inaugural holder of the James A. and Cherry A. Banks Professorship in Multicultural Education and incoming director of the Banks Center for Educational Justice, which will formally launch in fall 2018.

During her senior year of college, Raedell Cannie recalls the moment her academic path changed from journalism to education.

She was listening to a guest lecture from a journalist who described her research for a story on homelessness. The journalist got to know a homeless woman for the purposes of collecting information, but did not maintain the relationship after the story had been written.

Across the world, educators are grappling with how to work within increasingly interconnected and diverse societies where racial and social inequities, historical animosities and citizenship status present barriers for students from marginalized groups.