Math Is Racist
By: Michaeljon Murphy
Director of Communications
Constitution Party of Wisconsin
Some strident voices on the woke left want us to believe that math is racist.
Image by jcomp on Magnific
Seattle math teacher Shraddha Shirude is one who says that math is “used to oppress people.” Surprisingly, this is not limited to west-coast America. Similar cries of math racism arise from the U.K., New Zealand, and Australia, calling for math to be “decolonized” and rescued from its European influences. A 2022 opinion piece in Newsweek talked about the Math Equity Toolkit from A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction.
“The toolkit warns educators that ‘white supremacy culture’ shows up in the classroom every time teachers ‘treat mistakes as problems by equating them with wrongness’ because it ‘reinforces the ideas of perfectionism (that students shouldn’t make mistakes) and paternalism (teachers or other experts can and should correct mistakes)’—both among the ideas commonly ascribed to ‘white supremacy culture.’”
This fits nicely with the CRT-led initiatives that paint minority students as an “oppressed minority” who are held back by the Western white system. This leads to feelings of perpetual victimhood and stifles the initiative for self-improvement. The improvement must come through the dismantling of the system, or at least pressuring the “oppressors” to offer some sort of reparations that will bring about a utopia of equity.
History shows us a couple of examples of people who found ways to escape the victim mentality.
Stand and Deliver
Jaime Escalante
Los Angeles Times, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Jaime Escalante, a Bolivian immigrant, began teaching at Garfield High School in Los Angeles in 1974. The school had a predominantly Hispanic student body. Academic scores were lackluster. In Escalante’s early days at the school, he said, “There is no teaching, no learning going on here. We are just baby-sitting.” While many needed basic math skills, Escalante pushed for mastery of basic algebra. The Grokipedia article on him states, “He rejected excuses rooted in socioeconomic or cultural backgrounds, asserting that mathematics is a universal discipline accessible to all who commit to rigorous effort, rather than one biased by ethnicity or environment.”
Late in the decade, he started teaching Advanced Placement Calculus. His program would be demanding, but he told the students, “I’ll teach you math and that’s your language. With that, you’re going to make it. You’re going to college and sit in the first row, not the back because you’re going to know more than anybody.” The 1988 movie Stand and Deliver dramatizes his efforts and successes. Escalante considered the movie 90% accurate and 10% drama. The dramatic influences did not show the extent of the hard work these “underprivileged” kids put in. Grokipedia gives a flavor of the seriousness of the commitment. “To counter lax cultural norms around academic pressure, Escalante mandated parental involvement via signed contracts, phone calls, and home visits to secure family support, alongside compulsory Saturday morning classes and an intensive eight-week summer program for preparation.” An amazing percentage of his students would go on to pass the national AP Calculus test. He had, indeed handed them a key to a future full of possibilities.
Gifted Hands
Ben Carson
Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Ben Carson’s mother married when she was just 13. They had two children. When Ben was eight years old, his mother learned that her husband was guilty of bigamy for not having divorced his first wife, with whom he had a family. Growing up in the 1960s with a broken family, you would expect young Carson to have a limited future. However, his mother did not buy into this mentality. Though she did not know how to read, she demanded that her sons read two books a week and write her a book report on each. She “reviewed” their work, with the boys being none the wiser that she was illiterate. Ben’s grades in school quickly improved. Carson admits that he had a problem with his temper as a teenager and nearly stabbed a friend in the stomach in one of his fits of anger. Tragedy was avoided when the blade hit the boy’s belt buckle. His academic success and a study of the verses on anger from Proverbs settled him down. He went on to higher education and became a world-renowned neurosurgeon, and later, a political figure.
An Excuse for Underachievement
It’s a sad state of affairs that most inner-city schools are perpetually underperforming, no matter how much money is added to the school systems. Wisconsin’s 400-year property tax increase cobbled together by Governor Evers treating the law like a word-search puzzle is not helping the Milwaukee Public Schools turn out more prepared students.
Low expectations may be the bread and butter of CRT, but for those who set their sights higher, it turns out that math and education is not racist. Will we find new voices who inspire excellence where it is not expected? Let’s hope those voices will be stronger than the ones preaching victimhood. For those who listen to the still small voice, the American dream still lives.
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