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Valuing Multicultural Education

By Lisa William-White

Featuring the insight and expertise of some of Sac State’s all-star professors—without the final exam

While growing up in East Palo Alto, Calif., surrounded by neighboring communities of affluence, the phrases “educational equity” and “social justice” were not a part of my lexicon. Yet on a visceral level, I understood that my school experience as a black female was different from the dominant group at my suburban high school.

There, I learned that Caucasian and upper middleclass were normative conceptions of what it meant to be a Bear—our school mascot. And those Bears were the ones who overpopulated honors and advanced placement courses. They were the student government officers. They matriculated to universities at impressive rates. Those students were also able to look at the faculty of the school, and at the stories and images embedded in the textbooks and see their cultural backgrounds reflected and affirmed.

My “California distinguished” high school inadequately prepared large numbers of black and Latino youth for four-year colleges. Interestingly, my alma mater has consistently been ranked as one of the top public high schools in the United States. But I recall a culture where I, and a host of other “minorities” from my neighborhood, was relegated to low-level, tracked courses. I often found myself longing for a curriculum that both challenged me and was relevant to my life. I also longed for teachers who looked like me, who understood my interests and goals, and saw value in my community.

Looking for an ally in “Bear Country” was an elusive goal.

It wasn’t until I was in graduate school that I learned that there were educators, proponents of multicultural education, who dared to speak against injustice in its various forms. Scholar Bell Hooks reflected my convictions in Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope: “We need…citizens of this nation to uphold democracy and the rights of everyone to be educated, and to work on behalf of ending domination in all its forms—to work for justice, changing our educational system.”

I needed critical educators in my life. Those who understood that multicultural education was more than voyeuristically reading literature about people of color, or bringing a dish to school that reflected my heritage for “Cultural Appreciation” Day. Who understand that education is a form of liberation, where one can name their own experiences and work towards social justice and equity. Within the scholarship of multicultural education, I discovered an educational ideology and philosophy to articulate my journey through the K-12 education system.

Today, I am fortunate to work in a program that prepares future teachers to work within this equity framework. And I work with students who share stories that reveal the challenges they experienced related to language, class or ethnicity, as more than 75 percent of our credential students are of color or bilingual. The adversity that many of my students have experienced has spawned a passionate cadre of educators who desire to transform schools to challenge racism, classism and linguicism.

Lisa William-White is a professor of bilingual multicultural education at Sac State. She holds bachelor’s degrees in journalism and English from Humboldt State University, a master’s degree in education from the University of San Francisco and a doctorate in education from UC Davis.