Diversity challenges in community research and action:: The story of a special issue of AJCP

Community research and action often involve managing difficult diversity-related dilemmas. However, the literature on diversity tends to focus on success stories that tie up very complex issues into neatly-packaged case studies or lists of specific recommendations. This article introduces a special issue of the American Journal of Community Psychology that was rooted in the belief that it is within the stories of the challenges that the complexity of the political, historical, social, and psychological dynamics of diversity are most evident. The special issue includes 22 detailed narratives of dilemmas related to multiple dimensions of diversity including race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, disability, and religion. We asked contributing authors to divide their papers into three primary subsections: (1) context, (2) Challenge and Response, and (3) Reflections. We do the same in telling the story of how this edited collection evolved.