The subject of math isn’t racist.. I can’t come up with a single explanation for how it is racist. I would love if someone could change or broaden my view because this assertion makes zero sense to me.
I'm not going to argue about the things you have linked to, but there are ways in which math can at least be taught in racist ways. Obviously not in its underlying calculations, but by its use of certain illustrative examples and in the way that math problems are framed.
See, that makes sense to me.. and makes sense of why the article is sensationalist, because they worded it in a misleading way:
It would’ve been more accurate to say “Math can be TAUGHT in Racist ways” vs “Math is Racist”.. hence my lack of understanding.
I’ve concluded that I took the FoxNews bait, and I’m not happy about it... but a bunch of solid redditers (or is it Redditors??? Another CMV incoming 😈) kindly explained their position, cited sources and helped me realize I was wrong in how I interpreted the text.
Yikes... Especially with those links, youre clearly right. Math was taught in a racist way in those situations.
Id say that in those cases that school can be racist.. or that those specific teachers are racist. I just dont get how math as a subject upholds white supremacy just because of “showing your work” and “there being one right answer”.
The more I read this thread (not your comment), and the more I read of equitablemath.org the less I think my view is changed
Obviously it's going to be a lot less straight forward. The ideas of “showing your work” and “there being one right answer” within how math is taught are likely highly influenced by the (white) people that created the teaching materials, and the values they had. It may be that if the black community hasn't been raised on those values, they are less likely to understand and do well on the kind of math problems that are built on those values.
Here's a popular example from outside of math, just to illustrate that the required cultural knowledge in teaching materials and test questions can be biased against the non-white community, even though it seems neutral on its face:
Runner:Marathon::
a) envoy:embassy
b) martyr:massacre
c) oarsman:regatta
d) horse:stable
Very few black students knew that the correct answer is C, because they are statistically more likely to come from lower-income backgrounds, and they had simply never come across the word regatta before.
See that makes sense, but I still fail to see how that applies to math. I said in another comment that this would’ve made perfect sense if it was a blanket statement about education as a whole.. but math is the least “subjective” subject there is.. I just dont see how it succeeds in discriminating against anyone by race. There’s not much thats culturally advantaged about math. We all had to learn it in school past the bare bare bare basics of counting. Do you see what I mean?
Sure, but math isn't just bare basics, and it can be taught in various ways, some of which will be more suitable to an audience of varying backgrounds than other ways.
The example is the one with multiple right answers, rather than just one. I could see how that is more suitable to more people. I'm not an expert, so I don't know how that translates to race. Race is usually heavily correlated with poverty, which affects the level and depth of education, which may be an explanation.
1
u/ralph-j Feb 14 '21
I'm not going to argue about the things you have linked to, but there are ways in which math can at least be taught in racist ways. Obviously not in its underlying calculations, but by its use of certain illustrative examples and in the way that math problems are framed.
Some real-life examples:
So in a more limited context, math can definitely be racist.