NAME 2019 Theme
Decolonizing Minds: Forging a New Future through Multicultural Education

Social inequities have a long history in the United States and beyond, impacting our social, historical, and cultural growth, and our ability to create a welcoming community. 2019 marks the 400th anniversary of 20 Africans delivered to Jamestown, Virginia, the first in this part of the “New World.” It represented the start of the holocaust against blacks and the continuing holocaust against Native Americans all in the interest of money, land, and creating the new nation rooted in inequitable structures that remain today. Continuing federal legislation institutionalized these inequities and reinforced exclusion and exploitation as part of the societal norms on which our nation is anchored. Education played a salient role in the reproduction of these norms through the ideology of the 19th Century common schools, wherein the idea of assimilation was streamlined to a national mindset. Multicultural education is a response to this literal and figurative colonization of bodies and minds.

In efforts to transform society and create communities where the multiplicity of human experiences are valued, the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) encourages conversations that explore societies’ inequities and provide solutions that move these ideas forward. Multicultural education stands as the transformative catalyst that challenges all forms of systemic, social colonization. In solidarity we share our work and contribute to the change that will lessen the destructive influence of oppressive social norms like white supremacy, xenophobia, nativism, nationalism, anti-brownness, violence, and inequitable distribution of resources.

NAME and 2019 NAME Conference Co-Chairs, Lisa Zagumny & Bette Tate-Beaver invite change agents, working to decolonize minds, bodies, and space while striving for equity, to our 2019 annual conference where we come together and re-charge our dedication to multicultural education.
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