Introduction
As Andersen and Collins (1992) point out, "Race, gender, and class are interlocking categories of experience that affect all aspects of human life. . . and are indeed the basis for many social problems." For too long, those who have been students of social inequalities have simply drawn parallels between different systems of inequality, while choosing to focus on whichever one seems to explain their own experience. But, in the last decade, scholars have begun to emphasize the complex interactions and interdependencies between the "isms" of race, gender, and social class. This bibliography collects items which demonstrate the new focus on how the organization of societies reflects and reinforces racial, gender, and social class groupings and hierarchies. The items themselves are products of academic or pedagogical research.
In selecting items for inclusion in the bibliography, two basic criteria were (a) that the articles or books should include a discussion of all three dimensions, and (b) that there should be a recognition of the possible effects of the mutual influences of race, gender, and class on individual lives. To find materials that link the commonalities of the three forms of social inequality is very difficult. The three words ("race, gender, and class") have become a sort of mantra -- everyone repeats them, but as Elizabeth Higginbotham suggested in 1993, "The task of thinking about traditional scholarship in light of the contribution of race, gender and class has not begun." Despite the copious existing literature on each one of the three elements, it is still difficult to have a clear idea of how they connect theoretically or empirically.
The academic development which has most closely been devoted to an exploration of the intersections of race, gender, and class, and in explaining and understanding human behavior and culture is multicultural education. Thus, some of the items in this bibliography come out of the multicultural education tradition.
The first section of the bibliography focuses on multicultural education as a disciplinary development. The next three sections each include items which, while preserving an overall interest in the intersections of race, gender, and class, nevertheless advance a central interest in just one of these. Section II includes items which have put gender at the center of the focus; Section III includes items which put race and ethnic studies at the center; and Section IV includes items which put class studies at the center. Following these sections, we turn to a listing of items that are organized according to the academic discipline of the author, or which focus on particular important concepts.
We want to solicit all those readers interested in the interactive effects of race, gender and class phenomena to become part of this project. Please send us bibliographic information on items not included in this version which will extend our knowledge of the intersection of race, gender, and class. We are looking for materials which include all three categories. If you know of important or valuable items, send us information via mail, fax, or email, or fill out the Contribution Mail-In Form at the end of this publication.
The History of Scholarship on Race, Gender, and Class
"Education either functions as an instrument to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world." Guy-Sheftall, 1991:27.
From the Beginning to the Present
For much of human history, the education of the young served to teach the customs, rules, and ways of the society. When education became separated from this basic process of bringing up children, and developed into a separate institution, it often was created to reinforce structures of dominance. The children of the elite were allowed to receive formal education, which then certified them as being ready for the responsibilities and rewards of privileged occupations and positions. Other people such as workers, women, and despised outcastes, were prevented from obtaining the valued knowledge. They were forced to remain ignorant. Such privileging of the elite, and the exclusion of subordinate peoples, was often justified on the basis of beliefs about the relative intelligence of the excluded groups. Thus, for example, the assumption that women, people of color, and working class people are less intelligent than white males of northern European descent has been pervasive in the history of the Western and American education. Many challenges to the assumptions of intellectual inferiority have been put forth, but the residue of the thought is still a major influence in educational philosophy at the turn of the 21st century. Underlying the current debates about racial, gender, and class differences in cognitive abilities are modern expressions of old assumptions.
Over the Last Two Decades
Over the last two decades these debates and historical residues are manifest in the modern curriculum of higher education. As Rothenberg points out (1993:4), the curriculum is enormously powerful. "It defines what is real and what is unreal, what counts and what is unimportant, who or what is normal and natural versus who or what is abnormal or deviant. It determines where the margins or peripheries are and who occupies them. It has the power to teach us what to see and the power to render peoples, places, things, and even entire cultures invisible." A curriculum which ignores and distorts the realities of large segments of the population is one which teaches students limited and erroneous ideas.
Multicultural education might best be conceptualized as a developmental process that has progressed through a number of discrete stages (Hiraoka 1977). In the 1940's, intercultural education programs were implemented for the purpose of reducing prejudice (Banks 1979; Gollnick 1980; Frankle 1995). The 1960s version of multicultural education was based on the cultural deprivation model and thus manifested itself in the form of compensatory education targeted towards students who belonged to non-dominant ethnic groups (Francis 1995, Banks 1983; Pratte 1983). Such efforts have been almost universally criticized for emphasizing the superiority of the Western male upper-class culture.
The multicultural education movement of the last several decades reflects the strong but variable influence of the political struggles of the working class, racial and ethnic groups, and women both within and outside the "fortress of education," to obtain fuller access to education. They have questioned the most basic assumptions about education's goals and purposes. They have made headway, and yet it takes only a cursory examination of most curriculum and textbooks across academic disciplines to realize the difficulty of the task for the multicultural education movement.
According to Banks (1995: 10-11), the evolution of the multicultural movement followed four phases, as follows:
(1) The first phase of multicultural education emerged when educators who were interested in the history and culture of ethnic minority groups brought the concepts, information, and theories from ethnic studies into the school and teacher education curricula. The first phase of multicultural education thus can be termed "ethnic studies."
(2) A second phase of multicultural education emerged when educators interested in ethnic studies began to realize that inserting ethnic studies content into the school and teacher education curricula is nice, but it does not bring about school reforms that respond to the unique needs of ethnic minority students, and that help all students to develop more democratic racial and ethnic attitudes. "Multiethnic education" -- education designed to bring about structural and systemic changes in the total school -- was the second phase of multicultural education.
(3) The third phase of multicultural education emerged when groups such as women who viewed themselves as victims of the society and the schools, demanded the incorporation of their histories, cultures, and voices into the curricula and structure of the schools, colleges, and universities.
(4) The current, or fourth phase of multicultural education consists of the development of theory, research, and practice that interrelate variables connected to race, gender, and class.
Phases of the development of multicultural education, as suggested by Sleeter and Grant
Sleeter and Grant (Grant and Sleeter 1985; Sleeter and Grant 1988; Grant and Sleeter 1993; Sleeter 1993) put forth a slightly different perspective on the history of multicultural education.
(1) The first approach, Teaching the Exceptional and Culturally Different, aims to help students of color, low-income students, and/or special education students achieve, assimilate, and "make it" in society as it currently exists.
(2) The Human Relations approach attempts to foster positive interpersonal relationships among members of diverse groups in the classroom and to strengthen each student's self-concept.
(3) Single Group Studies is an umbrella term for units that focus on particular groups, such as ethnic studies, working class studies, or women's studies. This approach seeks to raise consciousness about a group by teaching its history, culture, and contributions, and how it has worked with or been oppressed by the dominant group in society.
(4) The Multicultural Approach to education reconstructs the entire educational process to promote equality and cultural pluralism. In the multicultural education approach the entire curriculum is rewritten to be multicultural drawing on content developed through Single Group Studies, the Human Relations approach adds on lessons without rewriting the curriculum.
(5) Finally, the approach that is Multicultural and Social Reconstructionist builds on the previous approaches, especially Single Group Studies and the Multicultural approach. It teaches students to analyze social inequality and oppression in society and helps them to develop skills for social action.
The Focus on the Intersection of Race, Gender, and Class, as Developed by African-American Feminists
The scene for the emergence of the fourth phase in Banks' classification of the evolution of multicultural education movement in the United States, and Sleeter and Grant's fourth and fifth approaches, was set in the later part of the 1970s when Black Women's Studies begun to surface as an academic area in the United States. The founding text on race, gender and class might be the Combahee River Collective's A Black Feminist Statement (see original text in Hull, Scott and Smith 1992), which discussed the oppression in women's lives, and intersections among gender, race, and class. The theorizing and conceptualization of race, gender and class from Black Women's Studies exemplify Antonio Gramsci's (1971) theory that every social group creates their own "organic intellectuals." This new concept emerged because of the failure of both Black studies and women's studies to address adequately the experiences of women of color in the United States. Indeed, the Black Feminist Statement on race, gender and class gives one of the best theoretical tools to understand how "race, class, and gender are not independent variables that can be tacked onto each other or separated at will." Instead, " they are concrete social relations, [that] ... are enmeshed in each other" (Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1983:63-6). Similar arguments were made by Andersen and Collins 1982, Brewer 1993; Collins 1989, 1991; Davis 1981; Dill 1979; Glenn 1985; Higginbotham 1994; Hooks 1984, 1994; Hull et al. 1982; King 1988; Lorde 1983; Sarks 1989; Simms and Malveaux 1986; and Smith 1983).
Shifting the Center: The Integrative Single Group Studies Strategy
Another contribution emerging from the theories of women of color is the reminder that the perspective emerging out of any "single-group perspective is only one angle of vision or perspective." See, for example, Collins (1991), Sleeter and Grant (1993), or Dei, Calliste, and Belkhir (1995). The centrality of any one angle of vision or single group perspective is only one point of entry through which the varied forms of social relationships can be understood. Johnnella Butler (1991) proposes a "matrix model," according to which the matrix of race, class, ethnicity and gender is examined within the context of ethnic studies and women's studies
A Multicultural Synthesis of Research on Race, Gender, and Class
Since the 19th century, scholars working in the field of working class studies, ethnic studies, and women's studies have unearthed and synthesized an enormous amount of information about particular groups of study. There is a great deal of material available to educate oneself, and a fair amount useful for rethinking the disciplines. The heart of multicultural race, gender and class analysis is a more adequate envisioning of the reality of the real world. The neglect of even one of the three categories weakens our overall knowledge and understanding of the puzzle of human society and behavior. Given that, the development of a truly inclusive theory and practice in every discipline increasingly becomes a crucial and urgent need. Although this bibliography does not offer a theory, it takes the first step by putting together materials to do this.