Woke Urban Mathematics: Meritocracy is Racist and Other Whines

Getting published requires attacking "Whiteness", including all traits that offend minorities, such as competently doing the work which merits the acknowledgement of having mastered a skill.

A math education professor at Brooklyn College contends in a recent academic article that “meritocracy” in math classes is a “tool of whiteness.”

Laurie Rubel implicates both meritocracy and “color-blindness” as ideological precepts that hold back racial minorities from succeeding in math classes in an article for the peer-reviewed Journal of Urban Mathematics Education.

"Teachers who claim color-blindness...are, in effect, refusing to acknowledge the impact of enduring racial stratification on students and their families." Tweet This

[RELATED: Prof: ‘Meritocracy’ is a ‘whiteness ideology’]

Rubel, who taught high school math for nine years before becoming a professor, argues that while meritocracy is commonly linked to hard work and talent, it also “functions as a tool of whiteness” because it “ignores systemic barriers and institutional structures that prevent opportunity and success.”

Color-blindness, too, can be an issue for math teachers, according to Rubel, who asserts that “Teachers who claim color-blindness—that is, they claim to not notice the race of their students—are, in effect, refusing to acknowledge the impact of enduring racial stratification on students and their families.

“By claiming not to notice, the teacher is saying that she is dismissing one of the most salient features of the child’s identity and that she does not account for it in her curricular planning and instruction,” Rubel adds, citing education theorist Gloria Ladson-Billings.

[RELATED: Profs say classroom ‘civility’ promotes ‘white racial power’]

Even math teachers who acknowledge race, such as those who indicate that they “can’t relate” in certain ways to students who are of a different race, are called out in Rubel’s paper.

If math teachers notice racial differences between themselves and their students, Rubel elaborates, “those differences are typically cast in terms of deficit constructions about students, their places, and their families.”

To mediate this, Rubel recommends that math teachers incorporate more social justice issues into math lessons, but warns that even “teaching for social justice” can be a “tool of whiteness” if teachers are not sufficiently attuned to the experiences of minority students.

This is because even social justice-minded professors may inadvertently hold the “belief that effort is always rewarded, [which corresponds] to various tools of whiteness, like the myths of meritocracy and colorblindness,” Rubel writes.

There is no possible way for a non-minority teacher to qualify for being woke enough to satisfy these requirements. This paper is racist to the core, pretending that minorities can't be expected to achieve competence, so competence is a white racist requirement.

Apparently INcompetence in mathematics is the new standard, as that "attunes to the experiences of minority students". Demanding the installation of INcompetence, as opposed to merit, serves as a death knell to the student body which these SJWs teach. Because minorities "are incompetent" within a white/western context, their INcompetence changes the objective to sustaining the INcompetence, and disavowing merit/competence.

I suspect that the goal of installing INcompetence has already been achieved in the generation of these "educators" of mathematics. No competent mathematician would take the anti-merit position.

Here's the Journal:

Vol 10, No 2 (2017)
Journal of Urban Mathematics Education
The Journal of Urban Mathematics Education (JUME) is a peer-reviewed, open-access, academic journal published twice a year. The mission of the journal is to foster a transformative global academic space in mathematics that embraces critical research, emancipatory pedagogy, and scholarship of engagement in urban communities. Here, the view of the urban domain extends beyond the geographical context, into the lives of people within the multitude of

cultural, social, and political spaces

in which mathematics teaching and learning takes place.

Vol 10, No 2 (2017)
Table of Contents
EDITORIAL
Beyond White Privilege: Toward White Supremacy and Settler Colonialism in Mathematics Education
David W. Stinson

PDF
COMMENTARY
Why Mathematics (Education) was Late to the Backlash Party: The Need for a Revolution
Rochelle Gutiérrez

PDF
Calling for Research Collaborations and the Use of Dis/ability Studies in Mathematics Education
Paulo Tan, Signe Kastberg

PDF
Separate and Unequal: Students with HIV/AIDS and Mathematics Education
Megan Nickels

PDF
PUBLIC STORIES OF MATHEMATICS EDUCATORS
“Its Influence Taints All”: Urban Mathematics Teachers Resisting Performativity through Engagement with the Past
Hilary Povey, Gill Adams

PDF
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Equity-Directed Instructional Practices: Beyond the Dominant Perspective
Laurie H. Rubel