Rochelle Gutierrez, a University of Illinois math professor, made a pretty wild claim recently essentially calling math racist.
That claim is that algebra and geometry are “white privilege” and perpetuates discrimination against non-white students. In fact, in a new math education book, she states that identity politics must be put into consideration when evaluating math proficiency.
Ever the typical liberal tactic… they only want to see (twisted) equality of outcome.
“On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness,” according to Campus Reform. “Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White.”
“Are we really that smart just because we do mathematics?”
She also claims that because most math teachers are white and the importance of math in the real world that there’s a sort of “unearned privilege” surrounding those that are good at math.
“If one is not viewed as mathematical, there will always be a sense of inferiority that can be summoned,” she says, claiming that minorities “have experienced microaggressions from participating in math classrooms… [where people are] judged by whether they can reason abstractly.”
As reported by Toni Airaksinen for Campus Reform:
Gutierrez also worries that algebra and geometry perpetuate privilege, fretting that “curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.”
Math also helps actively perpetuate white privilege too, since the way our economy places a premium on math skills gives math a form of “unearned privilege” for math professors, who are disproportionately white.
To fight this, Gutierrez encourages aspiring math teachers to develop a sense of “political conocimiento,” a Spanish phrase for “political knowledge for teaching.”
Gutierrez stresses that all knowledge is “relational,” asserting that “Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively.”