Standing Strong in Undemocratic Times: Supporting Diversity and Enhancing Democracy in Education

Many of the nation’s most eminent education scholars and researchers describe constructive and effective ways to respond to and resist the attacks on diversity and multicultural education and to support democracy.

In this timely volume, James A. Banks and a stellar group of contributors push back on the national and cogent attacks on diversity and multicultural education, both of which have accelerated after the 2024 presidential election. Each chapter author (1) describes the difficulties for diversity, multicultural education, and democracy during the next decade and (2) offers interventions and actions that can be taken by educators and policymakers to lessen and reduce these challenges.

Standing Strong in Undemocratic Times describes ways in which democracy is fragile and endangered in the United States and how teaching about diversity in schools, colleges, and universities can help to promote democracy in the nation.

Book Features:

• Describes the origins and nature of the attacks on DEI and of teaching about race in America’s schools, colleges, and universities.
• Provides information, research, and strategies that can give educators hope and ways to envision the future of diversity and multicultural education programs.
• Explores how opponents of diversity and multicultural education have perpetuated misinformation, such as the claim that critical race theory is being taught in K–12 schools.
• Includes contributions by three cohorts of multicultural education scholars: the founders, the second generation, and the most recent researchers in the field.
• Examines how fascism and authoritarianism are growing in the United States and how education in schools, colleges, and universities can counter these forces.

CONTENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS
Preface James A. Banks
Introduction James A. Banks

PART I: RACISM, FASCISM, AND THE QUEST FOR EQUITY AND DEMOCRACY

1. Surviving a Second Nadir: Resisting the Rightist Destruction of Democracy, Gloria Ladson-Billings
2. DEI, Democracy, and the Authoritarian Threat: Why Higher Education Must Resist, Royel M. Johnson
3. White Racial Shame and the Permanence of Racism: A Critical Hope Response, Robin DiAngelo
4. Rise of Fascism in the United States: A Critical Multicultural Anti-Fascist Response, Michael Vavrus

PART II: REVITALIZING DIVERSITY AND MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

1. Whites in Multicultural Education: Retrospective and Reflection, Gary Howard
2. Resisting Resistance to Diversity, Geneva Gay
3. Possibilities and Obligations of Critical Scholars When Knowledge Production Is Under Siege, Michelle Fine and Lois Weis
4. (Re-)Envisioning the Transformative Power of Multicultural Education, Gilberto Q. Conchas and Victor DeAlba
5. In the Wake of Anti-Woke: Education, Racism Without Races, and Breaking With Symmetricism, Zeus Leonardo

PART III: CURRICULUM AND TEACHING

1. Confronting Educational Inequity in the United States: Daring to Hope, Sonia Nieto
2. Curriculum for a Diverse Democracy, Christine E. Sleeter
3. Culturally Responsive Pedagogy for Immigrant-Origin Students, Carola Suárez-Orozco

PART IV: REENVISIONING THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY, DIVERSITY, AND CITIZENSHIP

1. DEI Disaster Recovery in America’s K–12 Schools and Higher Education Institutions, Shaun Harper
2. Redefining Membership: Executive Actions and the Boundaries of Citizenship, Angela M. Banks
3. Teaching Towards Expansive Solidarities in Dangerous Times, Wayne Au

Afterword: Diversity as a Vehicle for Promoting Democracy, Cherry A. McGee Banks

James A. Banks is the Kerry and Killinger Endowed Chair of Diversity Studies Emeritus at the University of Washington Seattle, past president of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) and the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and a member of the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.