Resources on the Integrated Analysis of Diversity Issues

Nieto, Sonia. Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education, 3 ed. White Plains, NY: Longman Publishers, 2000. [Suggested by Michelle Kelly]

Affirming Diversity is probably the best all-around introductory text on the topic of multicultural education. Multicultural education is analyzed from an institutional and political standpoint in this text. One of the beauties of this book is that it has twelve chapters, which nicely fits the time frame of a semester but, thankfully, it does not read in the dry, lifeless style of a textbook. Another beauty is the inclusion of 12 case studies of secondary high school students from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds. Nieto's colleagues and graduate students developed these case studies from interviews with the students. Each case reflects the student's voice rather than the author's retelling of their stories. The cases are richly detailed with an analysis following each one. Several cases follow each of the first seven chapters and the chapters connect with the issues students raise in the case studies. Most texts written about multicultural education seem to focus on elementary school but these case studies make Affirming Diversity an excellent text to use with secondary education majors. Nieto is passionate about the issues she describes from tracking to racism to linguistic issues to school reform to parent involvement, to name a few. Each edition has been carefully updated to include the latest research on the topic areas she addresses. In a recent National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) listserv discussion about what texts to use in a multicultural education course, Affirming Diversity was the one text that appeared on almost everyone's list. [Reviewed by Michelle Kelly]