Culture, Diversity, and Education

Cultures consist of worldviews, practices, beliefs, tastes, and behaviors shared by social groups such as ethnic groups, racial groups, age groups, interest groups, or groups based on taste preferences or religious identities. Cultural diversity leads to many challenges in education, only some of which involve ethnicity and race. Race is most often used to describe unequal groups based on perceived physical differences, whereas ethnicity is used to describe groups based on beliefs about common descent and shared cultural practices. However, there is considerable overlap between the two, and indeed racial groups such as African Americans often share beliefs about common descent and [Page 557]cultural practices, and ethnic groups such as Latinos are perceived to share physical qualities and face racial discrimination. Hence, some scholars instead ...