Math Is Racist? Middle-School Curriculum Writer Says Math Upholds "White Supremacy and White Dominance"

“White educators like me need to embrace the burden of unpacking and dismantling white supremacy"

A curriculum writer who works at a lesson-planning agency for middle school teachers has published a paper arguing that math classes “perpetuate whiteness,” sparking concern among parents who want to keep ‘wokeism’ and DEI out of the classroom.

Michael Lolkus— who holds a Ph.D. from Purdue University — made a number of concerning claims in his recent paper, which he published in the last issue of the Journal of Urban Mathematics Education, the same journal I was assigned to read when I studied at Barnard College.

In his essay to educators, Lolkus begins by arguing that “educational spaces, particularly those centered on mathematics, uphold and promote whiteness,” and that efforts to fix this are still marred by “white liberal ideas” of what mathematics should be.

Because Lolkus is a white male (he/him), he bemoans the way that he might unintentionally contribute to this issue, and argues that this paper will be an introspective journey into how he might be contributing to oppression in the classroom.

“I am working to distance myself from whiteness,” the White man says, adding that he will “grapple with my complicity in working within an educational system that… maintains white supremacy culture.”

“White educators like me need to embrace the burden of unpacking and dismantling white supremacy in educational spaces. Engaging with whiteness studies supports researchers in recognizing whiteness as practices that promote unearned white dominance through history.”

“Utilizing whiteness studies can support researchers in exploring the causes of racial harm,” he adds.

To explain what he means exactly by “whiteness” in education, he provides a few pages of research. This research was funded by Purdue University’s Bilsand Grant, which provides certain scholars with tuition and salary assistance during the first year of the program. The school has not responded to an inquiry.

“Dominant narratives in the United States position mathematics as a colorblind and culturally neutral discipline. The values, cultures and experiences of People of Color, Black, and Indigenous communities are often ignored or devalued in math classes” he explains.

“Whiteness is often represented by low expectations of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students, which serve to maintain racial hierarchies in mathematics classrooms. These low expectations based on racialized identity markers and other personal biases can manifest in fewer opportunities to engage with ambitious and rigorous mathematics” for students.

“Furthermore, these low expectations translate to additional labor” for POC and Latinx students, he argues.

So, how to fix this?

That’s the question the Ph.D. researcher and curriculum writer sets out to answer. In the paper, he describes an experiment where he tries to unwhiten the curriculum in a classroom through targeted interventions.

However, it doesn’t seem to work, he bemoans.“My experiences as an upper middle-class white male informed every decision I made [in this experiment],” he said, adding that he grew up as a “heterosexual and cisgender male.”

“Perhaps the most prominent way that I perpetuated whiteness in [in this experiment] was through positioning myself, a white male mathematics teacher, as an authority figure in a course that aimed to work on challenging issues of social justice with mathematics.”

“My unearned privilege of being accepted as an expert on issues of social justice that have not yet, nor will likely, directly influence my lived experiences in both a discipline and country normed on maleness and whiteness both is a result of and further contributes to white supremacy culture.

So, damned if you do, damned if you don’t?

“It is important to recognize that not only white people are socialized into whiteness. As a manifestation of everyday practices and norms, all people are socialized into whiteness and may unintentionally perpetuate whiteness and uphold white supremacy,” he adds.

Why this person has a say in what gets taught to middle schoolers, I have no clue. His employer, the CMP Educational Program, which creates problem based textbooks for math classes, also did not respond to an inquiry.

This piece was brought to you by Toni Airaksinen, Senior Editor of Liberty Affair and an independent journalist based in Boca Raton, Florida.

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