The Origins Of American Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism was a kind of cultural, ideological or political phenomenon which came up in the United States in early 1990s. It has been affecting all aspects of American social lives since then. The post-Doctoral research report before you intends to explore deeply the orgins of the rise of multiculturalism.As we know, multiculturalism first appeared in American higher education institutions. I have tried to trace the origins of multiculturalism to the multicultural education movement in early American history. Educational unequality has a long history in America. African Americans, American Indians, German Americans, Jewish Americans and other minority groups have struggled to get equal education opportunities, trying to preserve and carry forward their own culture, tradition and values. And they have developed explicit sense if group idenity. It's not until mid-1950s when African Americans obtained their equal right to be educated equally as whites as a result of the famous Brown decision delivered by U. S. Supreme Court. As for American Indians, they got the same right in 1960s.In the mid-1960s, American Congress readjusted its immigration policies and passed a new immigration act, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. The new Act abolished the national origins quota system, eliminating national origin, race, or ancestry as a basis for immigraton to the United States. This Act showed its significant influence in late 1980s and 1990s. Asian Americans and Hispanics took the position of European Americans as the mainbody of immigration. Another climax of immigration in American history of immigration came into being, which changed the ethnic structure of the United States. Its effects on American education were that the student body became more and more diverse. These subordinate ethnic group students participated in the struggle for assertion and maintenance of thnic identity, culture and traditions and contributed to the rise of multiculturalism.The Affirmative Action programs, guidelines and regulations developed by the federal executive agencies in order to carry out these programs, and the decisions and rulings given by U. S. Supreme Court and local courts on the legality and constitutionality in the cases relvent to the Affirmative Action programs composed a whole system of laws and policies on American minority groups, women and the handicappeds. Preferial treatment and quota system were the most important principles. They had at least three aspects of effects on American higher education institutions: the faculty became more diverse, the increase of the number of ethnic group students, and the changes in American racial and ethnic relations.The ethnic studies programs were developed in American colleges and universities in late 1960s as a result of civil rights movement, anti-war movement and counterculture movement. These programs had played an important role in the reform movement of curricula of American higher education institutions. To some extent, ethnic studies and multiculturalism had the same goal.