ABSTRACT
There has been a remarkable tendency in current appraisals of multiculturalism to neglect or ignore profound changes in the structural dynamics and modes of capital accumulation worldwide. This is most evident in the commentaries of multiculturalist scholars whose theoretical orientations could be described as ‘postmodernist’ or ‘post-Marxist’. The emergence of the post-Fordist socioeconomic landscape and the reconfiguration of racialized social relations in cities such as Los Angeles, where we live, in our mind mandates a re-examination of contemporary perspectives on multicultural education in the United States. At this precipitous historical juncture, when an analysis of and challenge to capitalism is so urgently needed, perhaps more than in previous decades, many leftist social theorists have largely conceptualized the very idea of capitalism out of existence. In addition to promoting the strange disappearance of capitalism in the education literature on multiculturalism, contemporary responses to recent structural changes in the United States’ political economy have made the issues of ‘race’ and racism much more complex than ever before.
