Response to Mike

Although I have already made one post about this topic, I wanted to respond to Mike's post to emphasize a different reason that multiculturalism in classrooms is valuable. In my last post, I stressed the importance of students learning multiple points of view through a multicultural curriculum. However, that is not the only benefit. Reading books by African-American authors, female authors, etc, is important because students who are African-American, female, etc, deserve role models that are like them. If kids are only reading White male authors in school, then they may believe that only White males can write books. Furthermore, a fictional story is easier to relate to if the protagonist is like you in some way. For example, I got tired of reading books with male protagonists in school. Every book was about a man discovering something, or going on an adventure, or just generally being active in the world. I wanted to do all of those things, and I felt like I could relate to those characters in a way, but I felt like I wasn't supposed to relate to them. I'm not saying that the individual author intended for the book to be for White males. But when this kind of exclusion of women and people of color is so institutionalized, it just feels like the world is not made for outsiders to feel like they belong. When literally every book you read in school is written by a White male, I think this makes people who aren't White males subconsciously (or maybe not subconsciously in some cases) feel like an outsider. So, in addition to multicultural education providing different valuable points of view, it also gives children from marginalized groups role models and a feeling of inclusion.