Multiculturalism means that under the condition that human society is becoming more and more complex and information circulation is becoming more and more developed, the renewal and change of culture are also accelerating day by day. The development of various cultures faces different opportunities and challenges, and new cultures will emerge one after another. Under the modern complex social structure, we inevitably need different cultures to serve the development of society, and these cultures serve the development of society, which produces cultural pluralism, that is, multiculturalism under the complex social background.

The emergence of the word multiculturalism began in the United States in the 1980s. 1988 In the spring, a curriculum reform on the campus of Stanford University became the beginning of what later scholars called the "Cultural Revolution". [1] This reform quickly spread to the whole field of education and then caused different effects in other social fields. The academic circles discussed and debated this phenomenon. In the 1990s, due to the fierce debate, some people even called multiculturalism and related debates "cultural wars".

In the field of American history research in China, from the third issue of American Studies (1992), where Shen Zongmei challenged American mainstream culture (in the article, Shen translated multiculturalism as "cultural multiculturalism") to the national social science fund project "American Multiculturalism Research" 200 1, domestic academic circles also discussed the related issues of multiculturalism. In addition to the above papers, the cultural part of the book Contemporary American Culture and Society (China Social Sciences Press, 2000, 1 1 edition) edited by Zhu Shida is also one of the important achievements. Academic circles have reached some understandings, but there are still many unsolved theoretical gaps.