Abstract

In Ottawa, Canada, if you are a working-class, or perceived to be a working-class, Black male in the high school system, multicultural education has come to mean unequal treatment, low teacher expectation, negative stereotyping, getting expelled, suspended or inducted into the criminal justice system by your school. This educational reality has come to represent multiculturalism and diversity as experienced by Black youths and their parents, particularly those that are economically disadvantaged. In this presentation, I will incorporate my personal experiences as a working-class mother 25 years prior to my doctoral research study. My presentation will juxtapose my research findings, to my earlier beginnings as a recent immigrant family being introduced to this thing called ‘multicultural’ education in Canada and how my experiences 27 years later as a middle-class parent and researcher changed, for better or worst. In addition, to further illuminate the impact of class differences on educational outcome, I will also juxtapose the experiences of the middle-class and working-class students and parent participants.