“Knowledge Construction, Competing Critical Theories, and Education”

African American leaders and thinkers, as represented by such figures as W. E. B. DuBois and Carter G. Woodson, have historically dedicated themselves to winning the struggle against racism and a racialized social order and improving the quality of life for the African American masses. Postmodern African American scholars have continued this tradition of scholar-activism in supporting the reconceptualization of U.S. society as multicultural. The varying approaches to multiculturalism and the contributions of critical theory and feminist theories are influencing the thinking of contemporary African American educators as they face the future of education. In the postindustrial and postmodern American society of the twenty-first century, the most critical educational struggle for people of color will be for control over the academic, intellectual, and political development of their children. The emergence of a global U.S. society from the Afro-Judeo-Christian popular culture is being born out of the challenge to reconfigure the dominant realms of truth and rational knowledge.