Is There a “Hierarchy of Oppression” in Multicultural Teacher Education?

• In Event: Multicultural/Multiethnic Education: Perspectives on Teacher Education

Abstract

Thirty years ago Audre Lorde famously argued that there is no, or ought not to be, a “hierarchy of oppression”; that the notion that one identity or oppression trumps another is, itself, oppression. Around the same time, many multicultural education theorists, initially focused on race, began to incorporate other equity concerns. Despite today’s widely, although not universally, shared notion that it is concerned with all forms of equity, research has shown that a hierarchy of oppression persists in multicultural education. In this study I analyzed course schedules from a sample of multicultural teacher education course syllabi and data from a survey of people who teach MTE courses to ascertain whether a hierarchy of oppression exists in MTE coursework.

Author

• Paul Cameron Gorski, George Mason University