Historians devote their lives to predicting the past. So when called upon to predict the future of cultural expression, as the editor did for this issue, I had to distance myself from my disciplinary comfort zone.
Not for the first time. Two decades ago I had to do this when completing my book, The Children Are Watching: How the Media Teach about Diversity (Teachers College Press, 2000). In that book I focused on the traditional mass media: magazines; newspapers; film; television; and radio. It was the first book (and maybe still only) to examine how the media have treated the theme of diversity, not the depiction of specific diverse groups. In other words, how have media provided an informal public multicultural education, for better and for worse?