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.

Response to Jacob

Jacob asked: Is there a danger is seeking authors of different races rather than the merit of their work?
I don't see why seeking authors "of different races" and seeking authors for "the merit of their work" has to be mutually exclusive. A similar question was brought up in class and it seems like their is an assumption that if we supplement students' reading material with books written by people of different cultures, that the quality of their education will necessarily decrease. There are many good authors from different cultures, so I don't see why a school would choose a bad book to teach just because it was written from a different perspective. However, I think the question of what makes a book worthy of teaching needs to be addressed. Because I think that, if a book offers a unique perspective that is rarely discussed in classrooms, then that alone is valuable. Obviously, though, there are other things that make a book appropriate to teach in classrooms. If we are talking about nonfiction (such as first hand accounts of historical events) then I think a perspective from a different culture is always very worthy of being taught. However, if we are talking about fiction, then you would have to hold "multicultural" books up to the same standards as the usual books are. I think most people would agree on that.
You said that choosing books based on the author's culture is "dangerously close to perpetuating very false distinctions between races". Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but I disagree with your suggestion that there aren't distinctions between races. Of course I believe that there are no relevant innate distinctions between races, but it is undeniable that the world treats the races very differently, and to try and erase that is what's dangerous. The reason for offering students different cultural perspectives in school is partially to help them understand that we live in a world where races unfortunately haven't been treated the same, and because of that, different cultural groups may see the world very differently. Also, I can only speak for myself on this, but I know that in high school, I was really bored with books written by males after a while. I felt like I couldn't relate to their stories at all, and so I completely lost interest in reading. Because my experiences as a female in this society are different than a male's, a person of color will have different experiences that a White person's. This alone is a good reason to assign reading students at least partially based on the author's culture.
Question: Has anyone had a clearly multicultural education? What was it like?