The Unintended Consequences of the Demographic Imperative

• In Event: Separate or Equal: Race, Space, and Nation in Contemporary American Schools

Abstract

Here a white male teacher educator sets out to explain how the “demographic imperative,” which refers to the overwhelming number of white teachers and the ever-increasing number of students of color in PK-12 schools, has resulted in the understanding and conceptualization of multicultural and anti-racist education as being for students of color. This emphasis on the demographic imperative as the motivating factor in multicultural work, however, has the impact of actually perpetuating white supremacist thinking, as the “problem/imperative” are students of color, not white people who have internalized privileged ways of being in a white supremacist society. We must move beyond the demographic imperative to focus our efforts in multicultural education on both white people and people of color.

Author

• Zachary A. Casey, University of Minnesota