{"id":1774,"date":"2017-12-15T21:50:26","date_gmt":"2017-12-16T02:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1774"},"modified":"2017-12-15T21:50:26","modified_gmt":"2017-12-16T02:50:26","slug":"math-is-so-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/12\/math-is-so-white.html","title":{"rendered":"Math Is So…White!"},"content":{"rendered":"

If it hadn\u2019t already become obvious, it is now painfully <\/em>obvious that leftists, particularly the agents of the Racism-Industrial-Complex (RIC), have become a parody of themselves.<\/p>\n

The academic left never fails to take the lead in these matters.\u00a0 A professor of mathematics education at the University of Illinois, Rochelle Gutierrez, has recently claimed<\/a> in a chapter that she contributed to an anthology designed for mathematics teachers that math<\/em> is, in effect, \u201cracist.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be more precise, math promotes\u2026\u201cWhiteness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOn many levels,\u201d Gutierrez writes, \u201cmathematics itself operates as Whiteness.\u00a0 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

She elaborates: \u201cSchool mathematics curricula, emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, \u201cmathematics operates with unearned privilege in society, just like Whiteness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gutierrez laments that we regard mathematics \u201cas if it is a natural reflection of the universe,\u201d occurring \u201coutside of human influence,\u201d \u201cencoding the universe with eternal truths, a natural order of things that should not be questioned.\u201d Thus, \u201cmathematics is viewed as a version of the world that is proper, separate from humans, where no emotions or agendas take place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mathematics becomes normative, the benchmark of clear thinking, due to \u201cits perceived purity [.]\u201d<\/p>\n

Gutierrez maintains that this value-neutral, normative conception of mathematics has had \u201clasting\u201d and negative \u201ceffects\u201d on legions of people who are \u201cnot viewed as mathematical\u201d\u2014which is another way of saying that they are not viewed as intelligent.\u00a0 \u201cSo many people,\u201d Gutierrez continues, \u201chave experienced trauma, microaggressions from participating in math classrooms where the idea of being a successful person, being an intelligent person, is removing oneself from the context, not involving emotions, not involving the body, and being judged by whether one can reason abstractly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gutierrez\u2019s point here is that, \u201cwhether we recognize it or not, mathematics teaching is a highly political activity.\u201d\u00a0 This in turn means that \u201cif teachers are unable to deconstruct the deficit messages circulating in society about themselves, their students, or public education,\u201d if they \u201csituate the problem of learning in individual student motivation and ignore broader institutional and systemic inequities,\u201d then \u201cthey cannot successfully advocate for policies and practices that are research-based and ethically just.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some thoughts:<\/p>\n

First, Professor Gutierrez reveals in this essay that she is among the Initiated in contemporary leftism.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t take long for those who pay any attention to them to recognize that academic leftists (sadly, a virtual redundancy) have a tendency to trade in jargon of a specific kind, buzz words which suggest, and seem designed to suggest, that their users are members of one and the same secret society of sorts.\u00a0 Gutierrez espouses several of them in just the few passages that are quoted here: \u201cdeconstruct,\u201d \u201cWhiteness,\u201d \u201cprivilege,\u201d \u201cinstitutional and systemic inequities,\u201d and, of course, \u201cmicroaggressions.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, of course, her insistence that all <\/em>teaching, including and most notably the teaching of mathematics, is political, locates Gutierrez solidly among the Gnostics, distinguishing her as a Fellow Traveler in the eyes of her ideological ilk in the academy.<\/p>\n

Second, it is also telling that the lingua franca of the contemporary academy in which Gutierrez has shown herself to be so fluent consists largely of highly abstract nouns.\u00a0 Ironically, it is precisely those leftists, like Professor Gutierrez, who are forever assuring us of the historically pernicious effects of the \u201cprivileged\u201d position to which the West has allegedly elevated abstract thought that resort to abstraction the most.<\/p>\n

It is leftists who appear the least interested in attending to any and all details that threaten to upset those of their theories\u2014like the theory that mathematics \u201coperates\u201d as \u201cWhiteness\u201d\u2014that are ideologically serviceable.<\/p>\n

The conservative scholar Roger Scruton noted the peculiar characteristics of this esoteric manner of speaking, which he aptly calls \u201cNewspeak.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThe world of Newspeak [the world as it is envisioned by leftists, especially academic leftists, like Gutierrez] is a world of abstract forces, in which individuals are merely local embodiments of \u2018isms\u2019 that are revealed in them; hence, it is a world without [individual human] action.\u201d<\/p>\n

This being said, the world of Newspeak is most definitely not a world devoid of \u201cmovement. On the contrary, everything is in constant motion, swept onwards by the forces of progress, or impeded by the forces of reaction.\u00a0 There is no equilibrium, no stasis, [and] no rest in the world of Newspeak.\u201d<\/p>\n

The eighteenth century philosopher David Hume too noted the benefits to be reaped from the use of abstract terms: \u201cIt is easy for a false hypothesis to maintain some appearance of truth, while it keeps wholly in generals\u201d and \u201cmakes use of undefined terms [.]\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that \u201cideas, especially abstract ones, are naturally faint and obscure: the mind has but a slender hold of them\u2026and when we have often employed any term, though without a distinct meaning, we are apt to imagine it has a determinate idea annexed to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, Professor Gutierrez can maintain the ludicrous thesis that \u201cmathematics operates as Whiteness\u201d only because she \u201ckeeps\u201d it \u201cwholly in generals,\u201d as Hume says, only because she packages it in terms of the very kinds of abstractions against which she rails.<\/p>\n

Finally, while Rochelle Gutierrez, judging from her press in conservative media, has generated quite the stir, her position on the issue of mathematics shouldn\u2019t come as a surprise to anyone who knows anything about the academic left.<\/p>\n

For example, the now late Iris Marion Young claimed years ago that while it \u201cposes as neutral and universal,\u201d \u201cthe ideal of a common humanity in which all can participate without regard to race, gender, religion, or sexuality\u2026allows privileged groups to ignore their own group specificity\u201d and facilitates the \u201cdisadvantage\u201d at which \u201coppressed groups\u201d find themselves.\u00a0 The problem, as Young saw it, is that the ideals of \u201cformal equality\u201d and \u201cassimilation\u201d obscure group differences that need to be made explicit if \u201cthe dominant culture\u201d is to recognize itself \u201cfor the first time as specific: as Anglo, European, Christian, masculine, straight [.]\u201d<\/p>\n

Only then will patterns that \u201cstructure privilege and oppression\u201d cease.<\/p>\n

By way of the Newspeak of the left, anything, <\/em>whether the delivery of mathematics or the ideals of color-blindness, formal opportunity, and assimilation, can be racialized and wielded as an indictment of European or white society.<\/p>\n

But what the left either doesn\u2019t recognize or refuses to recognize is that the very ideals on behalf of which they advocate, like Equality, are themselves Eurocentric to the core. The ideas of natural or \u201chuman\u201d rights, Democracy, liberalism, progressivism, and so forth are the intellectual artifacts, the inventory, as it were, of a specific civilization: the West.<\/p>\n

If Gutierrez and Young and their ilk cared about consistency, they\u2019d be forced to admit that what goes for mathematics and the like goes equally well for everything else.\u00a0 Racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and xenophobia, like mathematics, all \u201coperate\u201d to facilitate Whiteness, for such forces <\/em>are evil only if the Individual\u2014another Eurocentric notion\u2014transcends them. Thus, by promoting the idea that these things are wrong, one, paradoxically, promotes\u2026Whiteness!<\/p>\n

This, however, is a conclusion that the agents of the Racism-Industrial-Complex must fight to the death to avoid, for once admitted, they<\/em> would have to die.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If it hadn\u2019t already become obvious, it is now painfully obvious that leftists, particularly the agents of the Racism-Industrial-Complex (RIC), have become a parody of themselves. 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