ABSTRACT
Multiculturalism is just the latest in this sequence of terms describing how American society, particularly American education, should respond to its diversity. Nathan Glazer's assessment of multiculturalism is by no means the typical knee-jerk neoconservative dismissal that usually finds its way onto the editorial pages of liberal and conservative newspapers and journals alike. Multiculturalism is considered "the price America is paying" for failing, whether intentionally or not, to incorporate African Americans into mainstream society. The problems of divisiveness that multiculturalism raises at the level of the curriculum, or the school, or the culture, cannot be settled within the curriculum, the school, or the larger culture. Glaser's point amounts to the following proposition: Multiculturalism will remain a divisive force in our society—for the foreseeable future, anyway—as long as whites and blacks remain divided. One interesting and frustrating aspect of the many attacks by those criticizing multiculturalism is their refusal to ever meaningfully engage the practitioners and theorists of this educational movement.
