The world we live in today is a world where different people and cultures are always interacting. Airplanes have made it possible for people to travel to new, unknown places. The Internet has allowed for communication to explode between people from all corners of the globe. The result: cultural traditions once contained within a group of people in one location have become integrated into the large society that makes up our world. However, this new, multicultural society faces challenges that were not seen before the age of technology and globalism; challenges that cause us to rethink the way that we think of justice.
Multiculturalism: “The process whereby a variety of groups within existing states – religious groups, ethnic groups, groups defined by gender or sexual orientation, and so on – increasingly assert their separate cultural identities and demand that those identities be given political recognition.”
Miller (2001, 246, 252)
According to James A. Banks, the Kerry and Linda Killinger Endowed Chair in Diversity Studies and Director of the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington, an individual can belong to many different groups. Multiculturalism is not made up of simply Blacks and Whites. A person’s level of identity cannot be reduced to a one-word description of where he or she is from, but rather varies greatly and is heavily dependent on the context of the situation. Religion, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Socio-economic class, and ethnicity are only a few of the classifications that, according to Banks, make up a person’s culture. For example, a Hispanic woman’s culture cannot be said to be simply Hispanic. She is a woman. She is Chicano. She is Catholic. She is in the middle class. She is deaf. All of these things shape her personality and make her the person that she is. They are her culture, and it is just as complex as she is.
Dr. James A. Banks: Click here to learn more about Dr. Banks and his work: http://faculty.washington.edu/jbanks/
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