Resurgence of Ethnic Nationalism in California and Germany: The Impact on Recent Progress in Education

In a comparative study, the author examines the recent passage of California's “anti-illegal immigrant” Proposition 187, and the resurgence of hostility toward resident “foreigners” in Germany, as forms of ethnic nationalism resulting in exclusionary movements directed toward Mexicans, and Turkish and other non-German groups, respectively. Historical analysis and data from educational ethnographic studies reveal the interrelationship of historically constructed racial or ethnic ideology, intergroup experience, and education. Schools, while recent targets of exclusionary social movements, are still key sites for an education in new ways of thinking about racial and ethnic-group relations.