Math is racist?

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28 Oct 2019, 3:01 pm

https://www.king5.com/amp/article/news/education/seattle-schools-math-ethnic-studies/281-168fafda-6bf6-4ec1-ba0d-2a47c5030de3

I can’t wrap my head around this one.

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Bravo5150
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28 Oct 2019, 3:08 pm

Maybe they have new word problems around dope quantities and robberies to accommodate individuals who are in da hood?

LoveNotHate
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28 Oct 2019, 3:08 pm

Seattle minority students are not doing well in math.

1. Blame these students <---- NOT ACCECEPTABLE
2. Blame teachers <---- NOT ACCEPTABLE
3. Blame public schools <--- NOT ACCEPTABLE

Therefore, blame MATH.

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Fnord
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28 Oct 2019, 3:25 pm

Quote:

"The goal is to disrupt the status quo and do something different," said Tracy Castro-Gill, the ethnic studies program manager at Seattle Public Schools.

Change for the sake of change? Decolonization of math? A vain attempt to inject Humanities into STEM courses? In any case, a complete waste of time, resources, and effort.

Consider this from another person's blog - Seattle Schools Community Forum.

Melissa Westbrook wrote:

This post is about the head of Ethnic Studies for Seattle Public Schools, Tracy Castro-Gill. She was formerly a teacher at Denny International Middle School.

She is many things. Bright and yet not a sophisticated thinker. Energetic and yet she thinks no one notices how hard she works in the district and whines about it. Sure of her stands and yet unwilling to consider that she just might not have everything right. A scholar to be sure and yet, she seems unable to read for content, being content to skim and then, slash and burn.

Most of all, she believes she is the rightest of right.

In short, she's part of a wave of the new public education advocate - the zealot.

Great. Miss Castro-Gill also calls any white person who does not agree with her a "racist". That's all we need.

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Fnord
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28 Oct 2019, 3:42 pm

This reminds me of the now-defunct "Science Must Fall" movement in South Africa...

Persephone29
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28 Oct 2019, 3:48 pm

Bravo5150 wrote:

Maybe they have new word problems around dope quantities and robberies to accommodate individuals who are in da hood?

LOL... I just saw a Meme: DRUGS, the only reason the US knows the metric system. :skull:

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EzraS
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28 Oct 2019, 3:53 pm

Virtually anything or anyone can be labeled politically incorrect, racist, _ _ _ _ _ phobic. That's the way that system works.

naturalplastic
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28 Oct 2019, 3:58 pm

Math IS indeed racist!

And the race that is it's victim is.... us of European descent...WHITE people!

It was those brown skinned Wogs who foisted higher math onto us back in the Middle Ages!

Algebra was invented by the Muslim Arabs.

And our number system was invented by the Asian Indians. That zero through nine jive. In fact the zero itself was invented by Asian Indians (the zero was also invented independently by the Mayans- another bunch of Wogs).

It's high time we all throw off this yoke of this foreign higher math stuff, and go back to using Roman numerals, and only doing arithmetic (and do away with algebra, and any math higher than algebra)I say!

Bravo5150
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28 Oct 2019, 4:03 pm

Persephone29 wrote:

Bravo5150 wrote:

Maybe they have new word problems around dope quantities and robberies to accommodate individuals who are in da hood?

LOL... I just saw a Meme: DRUGS, the only reason the US knows the metric system. :skull:

Somehow that doesn't surprise me. You should send it to the Seattle public schools district so they can put copies up around the entrances.

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28 Oct 2019, 4:05 pm

Tim_Tex wrote:

I can’t wrap my head around this one.

The basic idea seems to be that since white males comprise the majority of mathematicians, its principles and practices are somehow embedded with racist and sexist "dog whistles".

What is so bigoted about "The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides"?

Are prime numbers a threat to progressive social theories?

Does the fact that zero is neither odd nor even somehow stand in the way of equal rights? For that matter, what about dividing by zero - does its undefinable result conflict with the categorization of people by race, ancestry, or sexual orientation?

Bravo5150
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28 Oct 2019, 4:50 pm

To support the theory that math is racist, I give you this clip from the onion.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... 3tCvgP2LOV

lostonearth35
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28 Oct 2019, 4:54 pm

I've always hated math, but I never thought it could be racist.

I guess next they'll be saying winter is racist because snow is white. :roll:

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28 Oct 2019, 4:58 pm

It’s Not Just a Joke Anymore...

Quote:

The following excerpt from a Campus Reform write-up is not a joke unless this professor is putting on an admirably epic long-term hoax:

"On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. 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," Gutierrez argued.

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."

The thing is, a good deal of math WAS developed, or improved, or at least passed on to us today by Greeks and Europeans. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Last edited by Fnord on 28 Oct 2019, 7:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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28 Oct 2019, 5:01 pm

In short 1+1=10 (if we’re talking binary), otherwise, math is nothing more than hogwash.

naturalplastic
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28 Oct 2019, 5:20 pm

Its impossible to either approve, nor disapprove,nor have any opinion of this because we cant even tell what this proposal IS (this combination of math and ethnic studies thing is).

Impossible to tell because they don't provide examples.

So you have a math lesson. Seven minus four equals three, or something to do with the "square of the hypotenuse".
How would you "combine it with ethnic studies"?

The reporters are failing to report the story properly.

You would think that math would already be a great leveler because its universal in ways that other disclines are not.

Bravo5150
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28 Oct 2019, 5:28 pm

naturalplastic wrote:

Example: if Julio has a five pound brick of coke and breaks it into three and a half gram bags, how many baggies will Julio have to sell?

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