Introduction

Abstract

The idea for this edited collection came out of the launch of the second edition of Multiculturalism and Education (Race 2015). The launch itself took place at the Dialogue Society’s headquarters in North London in April 2015. There was a demand by the attendees to keep the multicultural dialogues discussed evolving. The cultural diversity of the people who attended the event was truly global, as were the comments that were made to the papers presented by colleagues on the day. The majority of the contributors to this edited collection attended the event. The intention of this book is to keep the dialogues of that event audible and visual to a wider audience. This becomes even more significant when we consider the current political and global landscape. The rationale for more dialogue on cultural diversity and multicultural education looks even more important when we consider the presidential election result in the USA (November 2016), the UK leaving the European Union in March 2017 to be followed by a referendum in Turkey in April 2017 and presidential elections in both France and Germany in 2017. When we consider political slogans (i.e. ‘policing our borders’ and ‘building walls between countries or within countries’), then we have to reflect on the need to continue to highlight the importance of both multiculturalism and multicultural dialogues (Banks 2016b). It’s the response to these policies and politics and the increasing influence of the media which again justifies this project and the chapters in this collection. In important respects, the creation and evolution of critical race theory has allowed the opportunity for not only black and minority voices to be heard-see Coles and Hassan’s chapter in this book-but a much more cultural spread of voices to allow more multicultural dialogues to take place (Taylor et al. 2009; Aleman and Gautan 2017; Johnson and Bryan 2017). This method is very important when considering a conceptual movement away from multicultural, anti-racist and anti-discrimination policy and ideas towards more integrationist and assimilationist agendas and the consequent separation of alienated communities. But this is nothing new as Banks (2016b: 29) highlights when he states: ‘Modern education systems were established in order to build social cohesion through homogenization and maintain social control. The assimilationist ideology was used in nations around the world to “maintain social control” and to attain “social cohesion”.' Therefore, we need to reverse this process back to more socially inclusive and equitable debates that address contemporary issues within education. Moreover, the need and requirement of this text is to offer this space for the authors in this book to develop their own multicultural dialogues which will hopefully inspire readers of this text to do the same.