MATH IS RACIST?
Liberal Tropes That Hurt the People They Claim to Help
The Story
A number of liberal professors at places such as Harvard, University of Illinois, Brooklyn College and University of Michigan are charging that math (and science) are inherently racist and rooted in “white supremacist patriarchy”, as a way of explaining the larger number of Caucasians and Asians in these classes. Deborah Ball, a math professor at UofM, is particularly incensed.
“The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so,” the document for the “Equitable Math” toolkit reads. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.”
She also thinks having to show your work and do homework negatively affects Blacks. As someone who wasn’t a superstar in math, I remember that showing my work helped the teacher see where I had gone wrong, thus presenting a great learning opportunity for both of us.
Different kids learn differently, which is why good teachers provide reading, listening and activities to learn the material. These varied learning styles have nothing to do with race; they are simply a construct of what works best for different people to comprehend material. I remember extra help being available from math teachers when a concept was particularly challenging, and no one argues that this should stop. But are Black and other minorities really unable to learn the material? In my long IT career, I worked with a variety of people and never saw any group particularly unable to manage the complex material.
However, many people do not want a career in math or science. Both are challenging fields, requiring a lot of extra college; it’s not for everyone.
A History Lesson
Published in 1949, George Orwell’s book, “1984” highlighted a scary future, one we didn’t see when 1984 arrived. A key point was that you could be indoctrinated into believing things that were demonstrably true, i.e., 2 + 2 = 5. Ironically, this is one of the examples, those who think math is racist believe should be acceptable. 1984 is finally here, along with whatever else they want to make up.
In the ‘60’s, we had a space race and, as we all have learned from the movie, “Hidden Figures,” the astronauts put their lives in the hands of black women mathematicians whose brilliant work made the mission a success. Keep in mind the struggle Blacks had to succeed and yet, many of them made it to the middle class with hard work, persistence and strength of character. It’s easier now, with a much lower bar to success than was levied against them earlier in our history. But now, we’ve begun making excuses for people who have proven their mettle and ability to succeed. Why?
The Trope’s Purpose
Many objectives of the Democratic party are served by this approach. Much like “social promotion” –the ill-conceived idea of moving kids to the next grade regardless of their ability to compete at grade level— “equity” is the word applied here. This means that all children should be encouraged by receiving good grades in math and science, regardless of how they actually
understand the material. Each year, they will fall farther and farther behind, becoming discouraged as little of the new material makes sense. But to that end, California is pushing the elimination of calculus at the high school level to further “level” the playing field. I guess they mean that we should all be equally poorly educated or “dumb is smart.”
I suspect Dems also believe that since more Blacks than Caucasians are born super-tall and some are excellent basketball players, this must also point to race-based differences in intelligence. But we know that height is largely genetic and we don’t know that mental abilities are so simply explained.
Noted commentator on the field, Shelby Steele, says, “Inequality may be the result of blacks not standing up to the challenges that they face, not taking advantage of the equality that has been bestowed on them.” He points to affirmative action and diversity— “the whole movement designed to compensate for the fact that blacks were behind”—and says that blacks today have worse indices relative to whites in education, income levels, marriage and divorce, or “any socioeconomic measure that you want to look at” than they did 60 years ago.
“It’s inconceivable,” says Mr. Steele, “that blacks are competitive in universities today.” In the 1950s, by contrast, they matriculated with slightly lower grade-point averages than whites and graduated with GPAs slightly higher than whites. “Nobody gave them anything,” Mr. Steele affirms. “They didn’t want them in universities then. We would never put our race on an application, because it would be used against us. The minute we started to get all these handouts from guilty America in the civil-rights era, we entered this uninterrupted decline.”
These policies help keep Blacks on “the plantation,” by making the assumption they cannot exist without the help of the Democrat party and government assistance. Isn’t that the essence of racism? I would hate anyone to think I needed the government to succeed. Join me in this.
Perhaps a parody of the new green deal is a new era we've moved into that could be called the new middle ages or even the age of unenlightenment. The dumber the populace gets the easier to control as you noted.