Multicultural Scholars Research Articles

Multicultural Scholars Program Fosters Leadership Development and Cultural Competence

Multicultural Scholars Program Fosters Leadership Development and Cultural Competence

A virtue intervention for interracial interactions increases motivation to respond without prejudice

ABSTRACT Multicultural scholars suggest that effective Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training must raise awareness of prejudice and racism while also including strategies for changing behavior by developing certain approach goals (e.g. the goal of becoming a more courageous and patient person). This study examines how virtue interventions that cultivate courage and patience may be a useful approach for increasing motivation to respond without prejudice during interracial interactions. Virtue interventions were tested in 292 White college students (69.2% female; M Age = 20.9) across four conditions (control, virtue only/no race salience, virtue and race salient, and race salient/no virtue). Results suggest that White college students receiving the virtue/race salient intervention increased internal motivation to respond without prejudice, but those who received the race salient/no virtue condition reported decreased levels of courage and decreased motivation to respond without prejudice. Findings are discussed in light of positive psychology, DEI, anti-racism training and interventions, and virtue development.

Shades of Gray: Writing the New American Multiracialism, by Molly Littlewood Mckibbin

Reviewed by: Shades of Gray: Writing the New American Multiracialism by Molly Littlewood McKibbin Wendy Braun (bio) MOLLY LITTLEWOOD MCKIBBIN, Shades of Gray: Writing the New American Multiracialism. University of Nebraska Press, 2018. xi + 331 pp. ISBN 9780803296817. Mixed-race people have always existed, but are treated as an emerging phenomenon. While multicultural studies investigates the experiences and perceptions of mixed-race individuals from past to present, it has often fallen short of analyzing the role Whiteness plays in the construction of mixed-race identities, thereby leaving Whiteness unchallenged as a hegemonic racial category. Molly Littlewood McKibben fills this chasm in mixed-race studies by analyzing six texts that include an interracial protagonist with both Black and White parentage and in doing so, incorporates a more overt examination of Whiteness in the construction of racial identity and how this is depicted in contemporary multiracial literature. McKibben begins her monograph by clearly outlining her working definitions and providing a detailed primer of mixed-race history in the United States. This is important for two main reasons: it demonstrates the slipperiness of racial terms and highlights the often contradictory and ever-evolving ways these labels have been used socially, legally, and scientifically over time. In addition, McKibben notes that multicultural scholars often neglect to make clear their definitions or uncritically slip from one connotation to another, which does little to clear up misconceptions of race and inconsistencies in racial theory. The sample of texts, while analyzing mixed-race Black and White identity, also trouble the concept of Whiteness in ways previously unexamined. Whereas early mixed-race literature focused on the tragic mulatto/a character (an individual denied identity and community) or passing narratives (individuals choosing a tenuous and dangerous inclusion into White society), more contemporary iterations have focused on those same individuals forming racial identity and establishing community through Black pride and political activism. McKibben has chosen first-person coming-of-age narratives that reveal racial identity formation for mixed-race individuals, where the characters also explore their understanding of [End Page 145] both Blackness and Whiteness and what that means for their interracial identities. These texts include Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998), Rebecca Walker’s Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self (2001), Emily Raboteau’s The Professor’s Daughter (2005), Rachel Harper’s Brass Ankle Blues (2006), and Heidi Durrow’s The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (2010). In chapter 1, McKibben focuses on the works of Harper, Raboteau, Senna, and Walker. In these narratives, the protagonists do not want to default to the one-drop rule of Blackness and do not view Black pride as simultaneously denying the White part of their identities. However, their racial formation is often molded and even impeded by those around them, including family and friends, as well as the imposing gaze of strangers and acquaintances. These texts highlight the limitations of US racial terminology, especially for mixed-race individuals. Whereas the tragic mulatto/a figure emphasized the mental fracture of the Black-White multiracial person, these more contemporary texts expose that the problem lies with the “pathology of the country” (p. 74). Chapter 2 centers on the works of Senna and Walker, which explore ethnic Whiteness and highlight it as a constructed and performed identity. The narratives, which incorporate Latinx and Jewish identities, respectively, destabilize Whiteness as a homogenous, unracialized, and invisible category—one that is “pure” and somehow incompatible with Blackness. Building on this notion, chapter 3 focuses on the works of Harper, Raboteau, Walker, and Senna, who discuss multiethnic Blackness and colorism as Black identity is pitted against White in the lives of Black-White multiracials. These texts also demonstrate how psychologically and emotionally taxing it is for mixed-race individuals to navigate their own racial identities under daily microaggressions and cultural pathology. The protagonists learn the importance of diverse communities where they are less likely to have to defend or justify their mixed-raced identities. It is in these spaces that the characters often learn more inclusive vocabulary that encapsulates their identity, and they are less likely to feel that they have to identify monoracially. This marks a point in the multi-racial coming-of-age narrative...

Multicultural Competence in Counseling Research: The Cornerstone of Scholarship

The profession of counseling values honoring diversity and promoting social justice. These core values pertain to all aspects of the counseling profession, including the production of scholarship. Given that all research affects and is affected by cultural dynamics, we posit that all research is multicultural research. Additionally, research is a system composed of multiple parties including researchers, participants, reviewers, and readers, each with unique cultural identities and norms. Therefore, whether acknowledged or not, dynamics of power, privilege, oppression, and culture permeate all aspects of counseling research. This article is dedicated to dismantling myths related to multicultural research; providing examples of high‐quality, culturally responsive research; and detailing considerations for each step of the research process to promote multicultural competence and advocacy. We aim to help counseling researchers embrace their role as multicultural scholars and improve the quality and impact of culturally responsive research.

Evaluating Multicultural Education Courses: Promise and Possibilities for Portfolio Assessment

As multicultural education continues to evolve, better assessments are necessary to provide a holistic measure of the effectiveness of multicultural education in the academy. Unfortunately, as multicultural scholars champion the cause for social justice, equity, and access for school children they remain vulnerable to negative promotion and tenure determinations due to misaligned measures of teaching effectiveness in the academy. In this article, a Black female teacher educator at a Predominately White Institution describes how she utilized a Multicultural Education Teaching Portfolio (METP) as a means to inform the measurement of her instructional quality and effectiveness. This discussion provides an overview of current challenges to assessing quality within Multicultural Education courses and provides an outline of possible components of the METP for further consideration.

Funding opportunities at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture: program priorities and tips for successful grant writing

The National Institute of Food and Agriculture is the agency within the United States Department of Agriculture that provides extramural funding for competitive grants in research, education and extension. Several grant programs exist in this agency that support both basic and applied research in bovine reproduction, the most notable of which is the animal reproduction program area priority within the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative. Other programs within this initiative, while not dedicated solely to work in reproductive biology, also include opportunities for work on reproduction. The animal health and disease program area of this initiative provides funding for research on infectious diseases of the reproductive tract. The critical agriculture research and extension and the exploratory research program area priorities are two unique opportunities that offer funding for work in all areas in the food and agricultural sciences, including reproduction in cattle. Opportunities for education support at the agency include the predoctoral fellowships, postdoctoral fellowships, and research and extension experiences for undergraduates program, as well as the National Needs Graduate and Postgraduate Fellowship Grants, Higher Education Challenge Grants and Higher Education Multicultural Scholars programs. To stimulate technological innovations in the private sector, Small Business Innovation Research program competitively awards grants to qualified small businesses to address important problems in agriculture. To address veterinary shortage situations, especially those in food animal medicine, the Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment program helps qualified veterinarians offset a significant portion of debt incurred in pursuit of their veterinary degrees in return for service in designated high-priority veterinary shortage areas. The Veterinary Services Grant program provides funding for education, extension, and training in veterinary medicine of agricultural animals, as well as grants to enhance rural veterinary practices. Most federal grant programs are highly competitive, so skill and experience in applying for grants is needed to achieve success in securing grant funding. Recommendations for preparation of a meritorious grant proposal include careful reading of the program announcement, solicitation or request for applications to fully understand the scope, eligibility and requirements of the program; writing the grant proposal well in advance of the submission deadline to allow time for thoughtful preparation, critique by an experienced colleague, revision, and proof reading; and understanding the review process and criteria by which the proposal will be evaluated.

Allies for Life? Lessons From White Scholars of Multicultural Psychology

This article reports on a qualitative investigation conducted to assess how White multicultural scholars have responded to critical questions raised in the 1990s about their roles and responsibilities in multicultural psychology. We used the consensual qualitative research method to analyze semistructured interview data from 12 leading White scholars of multicultural psychology. Findings revealed 10 domains with nuanced categories within each. Key themes addressed: (a) antecedents of participants’ interest and commitments to multicultural theory and research, (b) how participants understood Whiteness broadly, and how it influenced their multicultural scholarship specifically, (c) rewards and challenges of conducting multicultural research, and (d) recommendations for future White counseling psychologists. Implications for training and future research are provided.

Multicultural Therapy Practicum Involving Refugees

Multicultural scholars have long noted the value and the need to incorporate multicultural counseling practica into diversity-social justice training. This article describes an ongoing, systematic model of multicultural therapy practicum in which clinical psychology trainees provide direct psychotherapy to community-referred, culturally and linguistically diverse refugee clients, under culturally grounded supervision. As a university–community collaboration, this practicum embodies the principles of multicultural counseling competencies, social justice, community outreach and service, experiential learning, and trauma therapy. In this article, we describe the target refugee population, the theoretical/conceptual bases, the learning conditions, the organizational structure, and the evaluative research of this practicum. Next, we present a former trainee’s narrative account of working with a male Afghan refugee from an autoethnographic qualitative framework to illustrate the dynamic learning process and the intricate cross-cultural interactions between the client and therapist. Finally, implications of this practicum for future practice and research on experiential multicultural training are discussed.

Legends of the Field: Influential Scholars in Multicultural Counseling

This study identified the most frequently cited scholars across 28 leading multicultural textbooks used in the training of counselors and counseling psychologists. Four spheres or clusters of multicultural scholars were identified and were characterized, respectively, as having either a profound, highly significant, significant, or important impact on the academic multicultural training of counseling graduate students. The top-cited scholars across the textbooks were also examined in relation to their scholarly productivity (number of publications) and their impact (number of citations) in peer-reviewed journals. Specifically, multicultural scholars were assessed on the delta-beta coefficient, Scopus and PsycINFO publications count, Scopus citations, and the increasingly popular h-index of scientific impact. Limitations of the study and implications of the findings for counseling training were highlighted.

Using Critical Race Theory to Analyze How Disney Constructs Diversity: A Construct for the Baccalaureate Human Behavior in the Social Environment Curriculum

Utilizing the basic tenets of critical race theory, the authors draw upon the expertise of multicultural scholars to raise consciousness and facilitate BSW classroom dialogue about microagressions perpetrated in Disney animations. Microaggressions pervade our media partly because they typically operate outside the threshold of the dominant culture's conscious awareness. Our main consciousness-raising method is to expose social work students to microagressions depicted in Disney animations and then use the classroom as a counterspace to process the experience. We note that utilizing critical race theory to become conscious of microaggressions within Disney animations is the first step toward eradicating them.

Beyond the Failures of Western Communication Theory

What more is ‘human communication’ than what it has been said to be? It is suggested that ‘American’ communication theory has conflated itself to the status of ‘human’ communication theory, and that an international, multicultural, multiperspectival scholarly dialogue needs to flourish in the 21st century to move toward ‘human’ communication discourses that can sustain humanity. By drawing especially on resources outside the Western mainstream, I identify four areas that have been insufficiently attended to within the dominant discourse of ‘human’ (i.e. American) communication theory: (1) the ‘relational’ self, (2) human ‘feeling’ and the human ‘body,’ (3) ‘nature’ and ‘spirit’ and (4) more ‘communal’ and less ‘agentic’ discourses of the core term ‘communication’. Interdisciplinary and multicultural scholars from around the world are encouraged to enrich the ‘communication’ conversation.

What do you mean by ‘anti‐oppressive education’? Student interpretations of a high school leadership program

Although theories on anti‐oppressive education abound, few scholars have conducted empirical studies of anti‐oppressive educational curricula to test the alignment of theories—constructed largely by university scholars—and practices carried out by K–12 educators and students. While feminist poststructuralist theorists have critiqued critical pedagogy and multicultural scholars for not interrogating their universalist claims and for overemphasizing rationalist discourses, many of their calls for situated, performative pedagogy remain abstract. The following paper attempts to make some of the conceptualizations of social justice education concrete by examining student responses to two experiential activities in a high school leadership program. Comprising students from eight high schools located in a single metropolitan area, this program sought to increase student consciousness of the pervasive prejudice and discrimination in US society and, subsequently, to move these students to action. This paper analyzes the student interpretations of two awareness‐raising activities at the program’s leadership camp to argue that on‐the‐ground anti‐oppressive educational endeavors require significant time, commitment and organizational structures as well as the integration of poststructuralist, critical, multicultural and feminist ideas.

Cultural Identity in Tibetan Diasporas

Tibetan civilisation is over two millenniums old and, today, its struggles in diaspora open up a new chapter in Tibetan history. Diasporic Tibetans (e.g. in India and the USA) have made tremendous efforts over the last few decades to maintain their way of life. We focus on cultural identity in the Tibetan diasporas, with special attention focused on its historical construction as well as its two fundamental dimensions – Tibetan Buddhism and the language. Through this analysis, we aim to ferment a new scholarly interest in the survival of Tibetan culture among multilingual and multicultural scholars.

Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs (review)

Reviewed by Jennifer Hamilton Ohio University Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs by Raechele L. Pope, Amy L. Reynolds, and John A. Mueller. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004. 288 pp. Hardcover $36.00. ISBN 0-7879-6207-4 A student affairs professional takes a break to watch a news program in the lounge. Eight students are also in the lounge watching the news. When the show returns from commercial, the story is on the "differential treatment Whites and Blacks receive in employment and housing." When the segment ends, a White student complains that the story was "grossly one-sided" and inaccurate and explains how he was once discriminated against in obtaining a summer internship. Another student in the lounge, a Latino student, interrupts the White student, saying, "White people cannot possibly understand what discrimination feels like, even in that situation." The other students and the student affairs professional watch as the heated discussion crescendos, ending with the White student leaving the lounge. One of the students looks questioningly at the student affairs professional, "Well, what are you going to do about that?" (Pope, Reynolds, & Mueller, 2004, pp. 207–208). The above scenario is summarized from one of the seven case studies presented in the book Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs. In addition to these practical cases, the authors, Raechele L. Pope, Amy L. Reynolds, and John A. Mueller, have provided student affairs professionals with a guide to infusing multicultural competence into student affairs work. Multicultural competence is an increasingly important topic in student affairs. It can be defined as "the awareness, knowledge, and skills needed to work with others who are culturally different from self in meaningful, relevant, and productive ways" (p. 13). As a term, multicultural competence originated in the 1980s in the counseling psychology literature. It was here that the idea of using a tripartite model of multicultural competence, involving awareness, knowledge, and skills, was developed. The objective of the authors is to fill the gap that exists in the student affairs literature on this topic. As Pope, Reynolds, and Mueller point out, the existing literature on student affairs focuses more on issues of multiculturalism and on researching students, rather than on multicultural competence and researching the student affairs professionals. The authors introduce their three core beliefs [End Page 1110] in the preface, and return to them throughout the text. The first belief is that multicultural competence can no longer be left to a limited group. Pope, Reynolds, and Mueller understand that we cannot all be experts, but that every student affairs professional needs to be able to meet the changing needs of our students. The second belief is that all aspects of our work must include multiculturalism. In other words, those working in offices of multicultural affairs should not be the only ones responsible for handling these issues. Finally, the authors believe that to fully incorporate multiculturalism into everything we do, we have to examine the beliefs and values of our profession. The terms multicultural and multiculturalism are used quite often in this text. The authors share that there is no "broadly accepted definition of the term multicultural" and that even "multicultural scholars have often disagreed about the definition" (p. xiii). Pope, Reynolds, and Mueller "believe it is important to acknowledge that all of our social identities (race, class, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, and abilities) influence who we are and how we view the world" (p. xiv). In other words, the basis of the definition of multiculturalism for which the authors are arguing is the concept of multiple identities. Vasti Torres, Mary F. Howard-Hamilton, and Diane L. Cooper discuss this concept of multiple identities in their 2003 report, Identity Development of Diverse Populations: Implications for Teaching and Administration in Higher Education. The intention to focus on student affairs professionals is clearly seen in the format of Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs. The authors base the first seven chapters on the seven core competencies for student affairs professionals, created by Pope and...

Toward a Multicultural Pedagogy: Literary and Nonliterary Traditions

Over the last two decades, coincident with the broadening of the literary canon, multicultural scholars have produced a vast amount of critical and pedagogical literature. Despite these advances, though, and despite a broad consensus about the and political goals of our work in and out of the classroom-that we have, as Doris Davenport suggests, a moral imperative (66) to teach itwe lack a coherent pedagogy. John Alberti accurately asserts that multicultural scholarship has adequately addressed changing the texts we bring to class but inadequately addressed what we do with those texts in the classroom (xi-xii). Our natural inclination leads us to familiar ways of reading and teaching, but most scholars now recognize that conventional methods may not work in a multicultural literature classroom. However, the responses to this recent awareness provide little guidance, as each seems to exist in isolation, or even counterpoint, to the others. With this fragmentation in multicultural criticism, we lack a coherent framework for creating pedagogy. A brief look at Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men can exemplify what I mean. An extremely difficult text primarily due its cross-cultural contexts but also a powerful and important story of the long-ignored experiences of Chinese-American men in America, China Men poses significant challenges for instructors and illustrates the larger problem of multicultural pedagogy. Western-based critical studies of the narrator's male ancestors tend to focus on narratives of exploration and discovery in the spirit of rugged individualism and the making of America. This theme is initially raised through the first interchapter, On Discov

The Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education.

The Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGhee Banks. New York: Simon & Schuster/Macmillan, 1995. 882 pp. $75.00, cloth. Reviewed by Donna Y. Ford, The Ohio State University. In The Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, editors Banks and Banks and their contributors have created a scholarly masterpiece that synthesizes research, theory, and policy on multicultural education. The book's 11 parts are woven into a comprehensive body of work not likely to be equalled or duplicated soon. Unlike some multicultural scholars, Banks and Banks have adopted a broadly encompassing perspective on multiculturalism. Their vision of multiculturalism is not limited to multiethnic education-that is, education that attends exclusively to issues of race or ethnicity. Instead, contributors focus on all racially and culturally diverse groups-Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, European Americans, Asian Americans, and African Americans-as well as examining diversity within and between groups. The editors offer the following definition of multicultural education: A field of study designed to increase educational equity for all students that incorporates, for this purpose, content, concepts, principles, theories, and paradigms from history, the social and behavioral sciences, and particularly from ethnic studies and women studies. (p. xii) Equally noteworthy is the editors' inclusion of demographic matrices often overlooked in education and research on multicultural education: linguistic and economic diversity, diverse families, gender identity, and combinations of these variables. Although no group is viewed as a homogenous collective of common traditions and values, these important (but sometimes superfiaal) cultural distinctions are not given undue attention in the Handbook. Rather, the authors focus their discussions on more substantive cultural issues and variables. Many contributors shed new and additional light on the topic of their chapter; few resort to rehashing the familiar and tiresome discourse that defensively argues the need for multicultural education. The contributors merely present the data, and readers are left to form their own opinions. The Handbook is divided into 47 chapters presented in an in-depth, balanced, and scholarly fashion. Each chapter successfully describes and extends research, theory, policy, and / or practice. The book clarifies the meaning and boundaries of multicultural education and helps to alleviate the widespread misconceptions that hinder its greater acceptance in academia. To this end, contributors use case studies, survey research, ethnographic studies, historical inquiry, philosophical inquiry, and experimental and quasi-experimental research. In keeping with the editors' concept of multicultural education, the contributors also adopt an interdisciplinary approach, borrowing relevant work from history, anthropology, sociology, literature, and other disciplines. Part I summarizes the history, goals, status, and development of multicultural education. It begins with James Banks's article, which outlines key dimensions of multicultural education as well as landmark events in the historical development of ethnic studies and multicultural education. Geneva Gay analyzes the conceptual connections between general curriculum theory and multicultural education. Donna Gollnick reports on national and state-level multicultural education initiatives aimed at students who may be low-income, female, limited-English-proficient, or from racially and culturally diverse groups. Gollnick categorizes these initiatives using the Sleeter and Grant multicultural typology (e.g., singlegroup studies, human relations). Cherry Banks discusses gender and race as factors in educational leadership and administration, focusing on factors that undermine the attainment of leadership positions among women. Although an important chapter, it seems misplaced in this section of the book, and perhaps would have been better placed in Part IX, which focuses on higher education. …