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Multicultural Education in the United States exists because equity for specific cultural groups within its national borders has generally and consistently remained an elusive reality, a perceived right and a specific goal rather than an achieved state. This has particularly been the case for African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and women in the above groups and the dominant white group (see http://www.iwpr.org/States2004/PDFs/IWPRFinalPressrelease4-20-04.pdf and http://www.washtimes.com/business/20050328-125309-1639r.htm) and poor whites in general. Equity, as used here, consists of three interrelated elements: access, participation, and benefit (see DeVillar, 1986, 1999; DeVillar and Faltis, 1994). The term differs from its near-cognate equality in that equality is associated with rules of law. Equity, in contrast, is associated with principles of natural justice which, ultimately, can guide, challenge, or change—in a word, supersede—law-governed equality.

Thus, the following definition of equity by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics (384-322 B.C.E.; see DeVillar, 1999, p.322) not only maintains its currency in today’s multicultural U.S. context, but serves to frame the perspective, both historical and contemporary, within which multicultural education is described, analyzed and understood:

"Our next subject is equity and the equitable…and their respective relations to justice and the just… [The] equitable is just, but not the legally just but a correction of legal justice…And this is the nature of the equitable, a correction of law where it is defective."

There is a corollary to the role of equity that must accompany any treatise addressing multicultural education in the U.S., and that is the notion of participatory democracy, as collectively and intellectually idealized, and officially transmitted through schools, in the U.S. Again, Aristotle’s words, beyond their continued relevance, embody the very essence and value of participatory democracy:

"If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost."
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
(http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/edc/what_is_edc/edc_q&a_en.asp?toPrint=yes&)

Thus far, the American law of the land has vacillated between upholding racism and ethnocentrism—the particularistic-exclusionary paradigm—on the one hand, and mandating decisions aligned with its universalistic-inclusionary rhetoric in favor of its plural society (Online Dictionary of the Social Sciences, http://bitbucket.icaap.org/dict.pl?alpha=S) and the nation’s continuing struggle for equity and participatory democracy. This latter perspective adheres to the following definition of justice within a participatory democracy:

"Justice amounts to that set of principles that are established in practice and rendered legitimate by the actual support of the affected citizens (and their representatives) in a process of collective discourse and deliberation."

(John Christman, 2003,“Autonomy in Moral and Political Philosophy” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Thus, the dual thrust of multicultural education is comprised of the perennial struggle-bound quest, within the self-designated context of the U.S. democratic nation, for equity in order that the term American can itself reflect the whole of the populous rather than, as has historically been the case, a particular part of it.

Christman, J. (2003). Autonomy in Moral and Political Philosophy. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved December 28, 2006 from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/autonomy-moral/#3.5.

DeVillar, R. (1986). Computers and educational equity within the United States: An overview and examination of computers uses in education. Stanford –UNESCO Symposium on Computers and Education, Stanford University.

DeVillar, R. A. (1999). Literacy and the Role of Technology: Toward a Framework for Equitable Schooling. In Tinajero, J. V. & R. A. DeVillar (Eds.), The Power of Two Languages, 2000: Effective dual-language use across the curriculum. New York: McGraw-Hill School Division, 320-336.

DeVillar, R. A. & Faltis, C. J. (1991). Computers and cultural diversity. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press.

DeVillar, R., Faltis, C. & Cummins, J. (Eds.). (1994). Cultural Diversity in Schools: From rhetoric to practice. New York: State University of New York Press.

Multicultural Education is a relatively new term that describes and attempts to harness under a common rubric a long tradition of academic interests, research, instruction, advocacy and action (Gay 1994), all which have, to varying degrees, frameworks and foci (Banks, 2004), the same point of commonality: equitable inclusion for historically disenfranchised groups in the democratic enterprise within the United States. Common major categories and their constituent elements that scholars, teachers, and advocates, among others, identify for purposes of research, instruction or support include race, ethnicity, gender, class and language—other factors, such as exceptionality (Banks, 2004) and spirituality (Kwok Pui-lan, 2004), may also form part of the multicultural education elements.
The multiple factors that MCE attempts to embrace, or more accurately perhaps, harness, may well be vast in scope and sensitive to integrate. As such, they may add raw complexity and puzzlement rather than refined simplicity and clarity to what range of definitional, methodological, and theoretical parameters delimits the term multicultural education (Ladson-Billings, 2004: 61-62). As Grant et al. (2004: 198) determined in their review of multicultural education research (1990-2001), sexuality and religion are considered part of the multicultural education family, but have not figured prominently in the actual research literature. Kwok Pui-lan, for example, has worked for years developing, applying and contributing research from the academic perspectives of the Asian Christian feminist and postcolonial theology movements, and the American Educational Research Association (AERA) has a special interest group (SIG) dedicated to “Queer Studies” (http://education.ua.edu/queersig/resources2.html). However, although both elements are theoretically included, there has been but a minor amount of multicultural education classroom research in these two areas over the past decade. Despite this challenging definitional ambiguity, multicultural education’s academic roots are solidly grounded in the perennial struggle—political and popular, peaceful and violent—for civil rights that sprang naturally from enslavement and exclusion, two conditions that were, and remain, antithetical to the rhetoric that serves to define, guide and morally justify the democratic essence of the United States of America and its inhabitants (Gay, 2004).
The multifaceted goal of multicultural education in the United States is to (a) develop research-informed frameworks of understanding of the various groups that comprise the nation, both historically and currently; (b) influence the socialization processes and outcomes of historically underrepresented groups through enhanced and relevant access to, participation in and benefit from institutional experiences, including educational, economic and civic; and (c) serve as a long-term, broad and accessible gateway to formally educate the American public about itself, in order to move from internal conflict and fragmentation to national consensus and social cohesion—to participate equally and freely in the dynamic social architecture and construction of our democracy.

How well this complex area, that is, multicultural education, has served the above end deserves continued attention and analysis, and will be the focus of forthcoming comments.

Banks, J. (2004).Multicultural education: Historical development, dimensions and practice. In J. A. Banks & C. A. Banks (Eds.), Handbook of research on multicultural education (2nd Ed.) (pp. 3-29), San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Gay, G. (1994). A synthesis of scholarship on multicultural education. (Urban Monograph Series). Oakbrook, IL. North Central Regional Educational Laboratory.
Gay, G. (2004). Curriculum theory and multicultural education. In J. A. Banks & C. A. Banks (Eds.), Handbook of research on multicultural education (2nd ed.) (pp. 30-49), San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Grant, C., Elsbree, A. & Fondrie, S. (2004). A decade of research on the changing terrain of multicultural education research. In J. A. Banks & C. A. Banks (Eds.), Handbook of research on multicultural education (2nd ed.) (pp. 184-207), San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Kwok, P. L. (2004). An Asian woman’s reflections on life in the profession. Retrieved January 8, 2007 from http://www.ats.edu/leadership_education/Papers2005KwokPui-lan.pdf.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2004). New directions in multicultural education: Complexities, boundaries, and critical race theory. In J. A. Banks & C. A. Banks (Eds.), Handbook of research on multicultural education (2nd ed.) (pp. 30-49), San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

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