It Doesn’t Add Up

This is not a political blog. Once upon a time I thought mathematics wasn’t a political subject. But times change…and guilt must be expunged.

First a little herstory: In 1978 I completed my Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the University of California, Davis. I was quite proud of that accomplishment at the time. These days as I struggle with balancing the checkbook or doing a killer sudoku puzzle, I think the person who received that piece of paper must have been someone else.

Little did I realize that by choosing to study mathematics, I was contributing to ‘capitalist, imperialist and racist views’.

But according to the Oregon Department of Education, that is exactly what I was doing! Here is an excerpt:

The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) recently encouraged teachers to register for training that encourages “ethnomathematics” and argues, among other things, that White supremacy manifests itself in the focus on finding the right answer.

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.”

It also encourages teachers to “center ethnomathematics,” which includes a variety of guidelines. One of them instructs educators to “identify and challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views.

I now see how insensitive and bigoted I was, trying so hard to find the ‘right’ answers to math problems. It was racist of me to strive to prove theorems instead of recognizing that ‘logic’ is in the eye of the beholder.

Since I don’t want anyone to think I am a racist, imperialist, or a capitalist (which is probably the most offensive ‘ist’ of all these days), I hereby publicly renounce my mathematics degree. I also vow no longer to seek the right answer when balancing the checkbook or doing a sudoku. I hope these small steps contribute to the cause of ‘Equitable Math’.