That student is perfect for medicine, and I have to remember to steer him or her that way. Beyond these subtleties, the hidden messages reach back into the community like a cancer. In school, student discipline problems and low academic achievement begin to affect the classrooms, and teacher burnout can become common as well. In the community, seeds of gang development may begin to take root. But the subtleties I've described are as deadly to the foundations of multicultural education and to society as the more overt and recognizable acts are.
Multicultural education demands a change in deeply rooted and extremely personal attitudes.
We must work on changing our own perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors as hard as we work to change these things in the world around us. Regardless of our own origins or even of our own socioeconomic situation, every one of us is affected by racism and its subtleties. We accomplish nothing when we fail to see this basic tenet of multiculturalism. A commitment to our working together as a unified body of people who value and appreciate each other for our contributions to the human race will be the defining factor that makes the difference in our schools and in society. The bottom line is that all of our roots are involved because all of us are members of humankind first.