5 Feet of Fury

Jim Goad: 1 + 1 = You’re Racist

Jim Goad writes:

Short version: Blacks and Latinos score much lower than whites on math tests because they’ve internalized the false stereotype that they score lower than whites on math tests, a racist fiction that couldn’t possibly have originated from the quantifiable fact that blacks and Latinos scored lower than whites on math tests in the first place.

I remember hearing the ludicrous, stillborn idea that “math is racist” all the way back in the early 1990s. A 1990 paper called “Western Mathematics: the secret weapon of cultural imperialism” claims that “western mathematics” was “one of the most powerful weapons in the imposition of western culture.” It then goes on to argue that “western mathematics” originated in India, China, and the Middle East, which means they aren’t really Western, anyway, so why are they even bitching?