Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon, Campus Reform; According to the Mathematical Society of America, the largest body of mathematicians in the world, mathematics carries “inherent human biases” which can only be addressed by “engaging in critical, challenging, sometimes uncomfortable conversations about the detrimental effects of race and racism on our community.”
ANTI-SCIENCE POLICY AND THE CENSURE OF DISCOURSE ON RACE AND RACISM
October 2, 2020
A statement from the MAA Committee on Minority Participation in Mathematics
We stand in the midst of a year of transitions. We have long been aware of broad shifts in the postsecondary education landscape, but 2020 has also been marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and emergency distance/online/hybrid teaching. Each of these new challenges for higher education has evolved alongside a movement to stand up for Black lives. The data are clear: these issues are inseparable. Black, Latinx, and Indigenous lives are the most affected by policing, health, and education policies.
Policy must be informed by facts and science. Thanks to science and mathematics, we understand now that masks, social distancing, frequent, rapid, mass testing, and contact tracing are all fundamental to keep our communities safer during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet policies at the federal level have not consistently reflected these facts; for example, choosing not to incorporate a mask-mandate in the US has had serious consequences. As Michael Dorff and Michael Pearson stated in a recent Math Values blog, “We encourage MAA members, regardless of political persuasion, to speak out for the value of science and mathematics, and hold our leaders accountable to make use of the best possible scientific evidence in policy decisions.” The social sciences are part of this community, helping us understand how to effectively communicate these practices to people, while also simultaneously analyzing our practices and policies with a critical lens. Critical race theory, referenced in recent Executive statements by the President of the United States, is an established social science inquiry which is grounded in decades of scholarship. It is misguided, at best, to reduce this theory to the race-blaming of white people and to define it and the discussion of systemic racism as a “divisive concept.” Furthermore, banning training utilizing this scholarship to raise consciousness, from federal and federal contractor workplaces, is an encroachment on science and the academy. At the first presidential debate this year, President Trump’s refusal to disavow white nationalism and his encouragement of groups that the FBI has identified as the greatest threats of domestic terrorism, only serves to reinforce the sense that his administration seeks to reverse decades of progress on civil rights for all citizens. These actions frame a current United States leadership that consistently promotes policy in direct opposition to data and science-based evidence.
Although mathematics, science, and higher education develop fact-based theories and practices that should inform policy, they are also political because they exist within a highly politicized system. Acknowledging that the United States has serious systemic discrimination has somehow leaped from a political issue to a partisan issue. More alarmingly, what we see is a series of pronouncements apparently designed to suppress conversation and action on race and racism in the United States. The American Educational Research Association recently released a statement that clearly addresses this troubling pattern of the federal response to racial justice unrest in the US, which reframes the conversation on race and racism as “unAmerican.” We borrow from and add to their list of recent, deliberate actions taken by the federal government:
- A September 4th Executive Memorandum to all Executive Departments and Agencies states that “all agencies are directed to begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on “critical race theory,” “white privilege,” or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil. In addition, all agencies should begin to identify all available avenues within the law to cancel any such contracts and/or to divert Federal dollars away from these unAmerican propaganda training sessions.”
- On September 6th, President Trump tweeted that the Department of Education was investigating schools using the 1619 project – a Pulitzer-Prize winning project meant to help fill a gap in mid-20th century US history by providing educational materials on slavery – and would withdraw funding.
- The September 16th launch of a Department of Education investigation into Princeton University weaponized a recent letter from Princeton’s President describing Princeton’s efforts to move forward with structural reform in response to reflection on their past. “On September 2, 2020, you admitted Princeton’s educational program is and for decades has been racist. Among other things, you said “[r]acism and the damage it does to people of color persist at Princeton …” and “[r]acist assumptions…remain embedded in structures of the University itself.”
- The September 22nd Executive Order is framed by a preamble centering white men as being hurt by blame for racism in the US, which effectively extends the September 4th ban on racial equity training to all Federal contractors. It then defines a list of “divisive concepts” which, for example, includes the idea that the meritocracy is “racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race, as well as new terms such as “race and sex stereotyping” and “race and sex scapegoating” which seek to renarrate white fragility as racism against white people.
- The September 28th Executive memorandum, which directs Federal funding agencies to “identify all programs for which the agency may, as a condition of receiving Federal grants and cooperative agreements, require the recipient to certify that it will not use Federal funds to promote the list of concepts listed in Section 5 of the[September 22nd] Executive Order.”
As mathematicians, we notice patterns – this is something we are all trained to do. We bring these Executive actions to our community’s attention for several reasons: we see the pattern of science being ignored and the pattern of violence against our colleagues that give voice to race and racism. We need to fight against these patterns. As educators, we also recognize the threatening pattern of banning education and withdrawing education funding to suppress conversations on race and racism, extending from elementary to postsecondary institutions to the workplace and research spheres.
It is time for all members of our profession to acknowledge that mathematics is created by humans and therefore inherently carries human biases. Until this occurs, our community and our students cannot reach full potential. Reaching this potential in mathematics relies upon the academy and higher education engaging in critical, challenging, sometimes uncomfortable conversations about the detrimental effects of race and racism on our community. The time is now to move mathematics and education forward in pursuit of justice.
Math Community Members:
Carrie Diaz Eaton, Chair, Committee for Minority Participation in Mathematics
Francesca Bernardi, Committee for Minority Participation in Mathematics
Christopher Goff, Committee for Minority Participation in Mathematics
Kamuela Yong, Committee for Minority Participation in Mathematics
Margaret Reese, Committee for Minority Participation in Mathematics
Michael Pearson, Executive Director, MAA
Michael Dorff, President of the MAA
Deirdre Longacher Smeltzer, Senior Director for Programs, MAA
Victor Piercey, Chair of the Michigan Section of the MAA
Jenna Carpenter, Co-Chair, Joint Committee on Women in the Mathematical Sciences
Nancy Sattler, member AMATYC, MAA, TPSE, & Joint Committee on Women in the Mathematical Sciences
Kathryn Kozak, AMATYC President
Anne Dudley, AMATYC Executive Director
Yun Kang, AMS representative for Joint Committee on Women in the Mathematical Sciences
Omayra Ortega, Editor-in-Chief of the NAM newsletter and NAM representative for Joint Committee on Women in the Mathematical Sciences
Jennifer Quinn, President-Elect of the MAA
James A. M. Álvarez, MAA Board of Directors & MAA Congress Representative for Minority Interests
Marilyn Elaine Mays, Joint Committee on Women in the Mathematical SciencesSource: https://www.mathvalues.org/masterblog/anti-science-policy-censure-of-discourse-on-race-and-racism
Wikipedia provides the following definition of Critical Race Theory;
Critical race theory (CRT)[1] is a theoretical framework in the social sciences that examines society and culture as they relate to categorizations of race, law, and power.[2][3] It is loosely unified by two common themes. Firstly, CRT proposes that white supremacy and racial power are maintained over time, and in particular, that the law may play a role in this process. Secondly, CRT work has investigated the possibility of transforming the relationship between law and racial power, as well as pursuing a project of achieving racial emancipation and anti-subordination more broadly.[4] Developed out of postmodern philosophy[citation needed], it is based on critical theory, a social philosophy that argues that social problems are influenced and created more by societal structures and cultural assumptions than by individual and psychological factors. It began as a theoretical movement within American law schools in the mid- to late 1980s as a reworking of critical legal studies on race issues.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
If there is evidence a mathematician has not received proper recognition for their work because of racism, politics, religious bigotry, or any number of other reasons, by all means correct the record and give people the recognition they deserve.
But suggesting mathematics itself is racist, as MAA appears to be doing, is a pretty big claim. To quote Carl Sagan, An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof. I would like to see examples of racist mathematics. The statement provided by MAA does not appear to provide any evidence to substantiate their claim of inherent racism.
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A minority of one, right?
Diversity dogma (i.e. color judgment), denial of individual dignity, individual conscience, intrinsic value, normalization of color blocs, color quotas, and affirmative discrimination, not limited to racism and exclusion, breeds adversity. Lose your Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic, relativistic, politically congruent quasi-religion (“ethics”).
The leftist push to destroy western civilization has been ongoing for some time. Critical race theory is just one aspect.
Gad Saad has wonderfully succinct and often witty and sarcastic views on this whole bull chips arena of nonsense, such as this hilarious take on “Social Justice Mathematics”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmf_QVL-k2M&t=542s
And again about combating racist mathematics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ge3Wx6si2s
And this one sums up the existential problem we face:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wa8Yh_sj1I
His book “The Parasitic Mind” details how this has come about, and how to combat it. It is out on Amazon now.
His blog “The Saad Truth” has a thousand short videos like the above on all these topics:
In plain English, critical race theory is obviously racist, because it demonizes the white race for no logical reason.
Every race is inherently racist.
Even in Africa (Rawanda) and India the Darker the skin the lower the status that is afforded the ethnic group. If you appear different from an ethnic group you are viewed differently by them than they view a group member.
Every color (Black, Brown, Creole, Mocha, Red, Yellow, White) is a race label and, depending on its usage could be viewed as racist.
China: https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/27/asia/chinese-racist-detergent-ad/index.html
This fictional rubbish from the Democratic Party comic strip
“President Trump’s refusal to disavow white nationalism and his encouragement of groups that the FBI has identified as the greatest threats of domestic terrorism, only serves to reinforce the sense that his administration seeks to reverse decades of progress on civil rights for all citizens”
Democrats have done more to DESTROY civil rights over the last year than Trump could do in a century !!
Democrats have been assiduously working to destroy civil rights for more than 150 years. This should only be a surprise to the grossly misinformed, the stupid, Loydo and Grif.
Trump has continually disavowed white nationalism, but the Left never seems to catch that part of the sentence. Selective hearing or something. The mathematicians above may have been “trained” to catch patterns, but if they can ignore piles of data sitting right in front of them I’m betting nothing they put out is worth paying attention to.
“Trump has continually disavowed white nationalism, but the Left never seems to catch that part of the sentence.”
The Democrats don’t catch it because they don’t want to catch it. They are going to call Trump (and every other Republican or conservative) a racist no matter what they say.
Republican = Racist is the favorite meme of the Democrats. About the only way they have been able to win election in the past is to play the race card, so they play it and play it and play it. That’s what they are doing here.
Radical Democrats are the most dispicable of creatures.
The problem is that the left defines any opposition to their racial goals as “racism” and “white supremacism”.
According to them, unless Trump publicly condemns every group who’s politics is to the right of Mao, then Trump is supporting racism and white supremacism.
Just like they never hear the “illegal” part of “illegal immigrants.”
The legal term is “illegal alien.” In law, an alien is a person who is not a citizen or national of a given country.
I was thinking the same thing. If they can’t find the truth in. Trump’s multiple disavowals of white supremacy and if they believe that defunding critical race theory is violent then I don’t believe they can be unbiased in their research findings.
“President Trump’s refusal to disavow white nationalism”
Sloppy thinking at its best. And from so-called mathematicians no less.
White nationalism has nothing to do with white supremacy. And nationalism has nothing to do with “white”, it is race neutral.
I prefer the term “civic nationalist.” Interestingly *many* non-whites are nationalistic – particularly *legal* immigrants who appreciate the special place the USA is. Check in with the Cuban community in Florida for whom the phrase “We will never be a socialist nation” resonates deeply.
The group that is almost unilaterally responsible for keeping certain minorities out of math and other sciences: LIBERAL DEMOCRATS.
Yes . Poor schools is one of their favorite methods used to accomplish THEIR desired racist results.
….” we see the pattern of science being ignored and the pattern of violence against our colleagues that give voice to race and racism. ”
They even admit THEY are racists !
The public is expected to belief a simple assertion (…the pattern of violence against our colleagues…”)
So who are your “colleagues” and what “violence” have they suffered?
Do you include as “colleagues” the felons who violently resisted arrest after committing yet ANOTHER crime?
What’s keeping minorities out of math and other sciences is what George Bush called the racism of low expectations. Blacks in elementary and high school are not pushed by teachers to take the hard courses like math and physics because of their low expectations for blacks. Instead they are pushed to become “professional athletes” which leaves 99% of them without the tools to succeed because they are not good enough to become a professional athlete.
Want to get rid of systemic racism and income inequality? Push for charter schools, private schools, and school choice.
Add to that the self-inflicted restraints of equating academic achievement with “acting white.”
Bill Cosby pointed this out; I wonder if this was a factor in his being taken into account in being singled out for terrible behavior that runs rampant in Pedo-wood.
I don’t think that the teachers are the problem. Many of these kids live in a culture that does not believe that education is the way to get out of poverty. Studying is viewed as selling out to the white culture. It has been my experience that black students recently coming to the US of A from Africa or the Caribbean don’t share that culture and do just fine in school while their peers don’t put forth any effort. The beauty of the charter school system is that the kids that are there are motivated by their parents to learn, and are surrounded by students that share the belief that a good education is valuable.
Excellent comment, Loren.
“What’s keeping minorities out of math and other sciences is what George Bush called the racism of low expectations.”
What’s keeping all sorts of intelligent and motivated students out of post-secondary math, and consequently, out of all the sciences, even “soft” ones, such as sociology, anthropolgy, and economics, is the inability of post-secondary institutions to TEACH math.
I first experienced this as a mature student entering a respected Canadian university with only Grade 11 education ten years before. I asked the head of the microbiology department whether there was any possibility of my pursuing studies in his department by means of make-up courses in math and chemistry. His answer was a categorical “no”.
After a successful year learning several foreign languages, I transfered to a larger, and equally prestigious university in another province. There I was required to successfully complete a math course that pretended to bring the attendees up to high school graduation level (Grade 12 in most provinces), despite the range of prior secondary school math experience from none to 4 years.
The instructor had never taught the course before, and we had three sessions a week for eight weeks to get through it. A quick look through the very fat binder persuaded me that we would be lucky to get through half of it. And this turned out to be the case. In fact, we never got past construction deductions, which I had studied in Grade 11 a decade before. We never got to calculus or trigonometry.
Of the thirty or so students in the class, only I and one other passed. The rest had to take the course again, and could not get credit for any other courses they had successfully completed until they passed this math course – a complete waste of time and money for them, the university, and society.
The other “graduate” commenced a 101 level university math course, but soon found that his “remedial” math course had not equipped him to be able to continue even this entry level course.
Later, when I graduated with a BA from the faculty of humanities, I was offered a Graduate Teaching Assistantship, which entailed teaching others, including faculty, how to read a foreign language. I had had neither training nor experience in teaching anything.
And I suspect this is the rule, rather than the exception, even for the most highly “qualified” university faculty in Canada. This may explain, at least in part, the failure of remedial university courses.
Over the intervening decades, I have watched hopefully for significant advances in adult language learning, especially since the advent of PCs capable of handling complex audio-visual materials. But there have been no such advances.
Here in Canada, where most children are now taught the second official language starting in elementary school (whereas in my schooldays, this was only compulsory in academic high schools), most are unable to converse or even read the other language a few years after graduating.
And for those who wish to continue learning on their own, the options have actually diminished. Where once there were several firms offering innovative PC-based language learning programs, now there is Babel, which offers nothing to the intermediate level student, even in the handful of languages it supports.
Back in the era of 3.5 Floppy Disks, there was an excellent language learning aide called Transparent Language. It briefly made the transition to CD, and then disappeared. Other players were bought up by bigger firms and shut down.
Is the prospect of studying higher math on one’s own any better?
I don’t think this has anything to do with “race” , “expectations”, or even with poverty, except for a poverty of flexibility, innovation, and motivation in the “teaching” community.
Great post otropogo.
Here in Australia they lowered the entry pass mark for those who want to study teaching to 50%. That was some time ago. Those who successfully complete their teaching degrees are now asked to teach children things that would be more appropriate for a parent to discuss with their children if appropriate, and that would be their discission.
I used to think that it was just Australia slipping badly in the education rankings. I suspect that it’s happening in many ‘western’ countries.
What are “construction deductions”?
Progress: unqualified monotonic change, one step forward, two steps backward. An evolutionary paradigm as it is qualified by different factions and sects, and diverse(i.e. color, not principle) people perceive different emergent, plausible outcomes. An imputed [positive] value and article of faith of what are ostensibly “secular” quasi-religion factions and sects.
Trump wants to requalify progress (i.e. monotonic change) to place people before color, life before Choice, etc. as in the American Dream: Pro-Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, free from diversity and other class-based judgment, labels, and bigotry.
Probably should be “pro the enjoyment of Happiness”. “the pursuit” at the time of the Constitution was a vocation or activity. A politician had a “pursuit” of politics, a minister had a “pursuit” of religion or pastoral activities, an “engineer” had a “pursuit” of mechanical design and execution- building a canal or railroad, manufacturing guns, etc.
https://youtu.be/0qD47QFFkTU don’t believe everything the media tells you. Especially if they are talking about trump.
You can’t tell a good spoof from a genuine kook. Poe’s Law
This looks like what someone like Sokal would have written.
Sometimes really intelligent people convince themselves of something really stupid.
Intellectual, not intelligent. FTFY.
A person can be intelligent and yet lack wisdom. Bodies like the Mathematical Society of America embodies such a severe dissonance.
The paper was created by an put together by members of the sub-committe, “Committee for Minority Participation in Mathematics”.
Those people have hit a wall in their efforts to get minorities into math as a discipline, occupation, or hobby. No matter the scholarships available, there are only so many people that want to ‘get into’ math.
The “Committee for Minority Participation in Mathematics” has obviously run out of things that make them feel that they are contributing anything of substance, so resort to this crap. It doesn’t have anything to do with intellegence, or intellectual, or wisdom; it has to do with selfishness, realization that they are leaches, and an attempt to make themselves feel better.
And of course merit, hard work and being on time are racist to explain the failure of the race-based inducements to work to the degree wish for.
They lost me when they equated social “sciences” with science.
Before you accuse science of working in nasty ways, while providing no evidence of corruption of mathematics, you first have to educate yourself that proper, hard science has no concepts of ways, good or bad. Geoff S
Critical Theory is Marxist. link It is devoted to the destruction of our civilization.
Every time it has been attempted, Marxism has led to utter failure. The greatest genocides of the 20th century were perpetrated by Marxists. link
This crap has taken over our education system. Defund the universities until they get rid of their grievance studies departments.
Well there was a paper in 2016 on the evils of glaciology; “Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research”
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0309132515623368
One of the most amazing reads you will ever undertake. Who knew that studying ice was fouled by colonialism, sexism and racism.
It look to me like we are witnessing an intentional and systematic destruction of the entire concept of science.
It is enabled by an intentional and systematic destruction of language, including the definition of words.
Only this week, the Left has decided to redefine the meaning of “court packing”.
Of course the redefinition of the label of an “WWII era German National Socialist party” to mean anyone who voted for the sitting President is now common.
I laughed at the bit about” improving human -ice interactions”
Does that mean if you slip on ice it guarantees to be soft?
To paraphrase then…
yak, yak, yak!
Seems to me that there is a huge amount of conflation in their assertions underpinned by a biased approach in the first place. Mathematics is precise and objective whereas the social ‘sciences’ are not, and should never have been termed as sciences in my opinion.
Steve I agree and I’m not a scientist or a mathematician. I would have thought that mathematics requires logic as opposed to the more emotive areas of social studies. Sorry, I couldn’t bring myself to put social and sciences together.
We would have said at one time that the world is going mad. It’s past that now, it’s gone mad.
“We would have said at one time that the world is going mad. It’s past that now, it’s gone mad.”
The only thing we don’t know is whether the crazies outnumber the sane.
We’ll know the answer to that in the U.S. in about 22 days.
The crazies always out number the sane people.
That is why human progress is so slow. Opinions matter more than facts.
Here in Australia, and I’m sure the rest of the world, we are all hoping for Trump win Tom. The world is watching. The hate from the left is unbearable and a Biden win would spread that hate like a virus.
+10 Way back when, when I went to school, we had ‘social studies’. At what point they became ‘science’ I have no idea. ‘Social scientists’ suffer from what some might call ‘science envy’…
There are a few activities of psychologists, psychiatrists, and similar devotees that are scientific. Dr. Jordan Peterson, of some Youtube fame, was part of a group studying I.Q. They found 5 characteristics that defined about 90% of the variation in intelligence. It confirmed the US Military’s 83 IQ as the lowest “trainable” IQ. They also confirmed that the mean IQ for women is 3-4 pts lower than men. This has no effect overall because most activities don’t require high(> 130) IQ. It does have a big effect at the tails of the curve. A few points difference means virtually no women are in the >95 percentile of IQ.
Examples might be Madam Curie for work on radium and Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil for a frequency-hopping spread spectrum technique she thought up.
Social “science” CAN be scientific but most of the published work deals with FAR too few subjects. Drawing conclusions about a population of millions fro a survey of 30 or so college students is ridiculous.
Individuals with high IQs typically learn to read early in childhood and they enjoy reading a variety of materials on a regular basis. High IQ individuals also have large vocabularies. Additionally, they learn basic skills early, quickly and with little effort and are able to work independently for extended periods of time. Another general behavioral characteristic is an abundance of energy that is sometimes mistakenly interpreted as hyperactivity.
The IQ curves are different for men and women. They are almost the same average and median, but the women’s curve is narrower. The number of women with an IQ within one standard deviation of average is more than the number of men. Men’s curve is shallow and wide. There are more men than women lower than 85 (jocks?). More men than women above 115. (nerds?)
The IQ measures a certain kind of puzzle solving ability along with memory.
Those with high IQ have an easier time understanding complex math as puzzles than those with low IQ.
Given these data I would expect that much less than 50% of women could be expected to be able to do Fields Medal level math. Just like elections, genetics has consequences.
This is possibly the most sinister development yet. Once the Party tells you 2 + 2 = 5, then that is what it does equal. The Humanities long ago fell to the NAZI ‘philosopher’ Martin Heidegger. Now it looks like science itself is about to succumb. Lord help future generations if these maniacs succeed.
I have a hard time seeing how mathematics itself can be harmed by the political bias of some mathematicians.
See above. 2 + 2 = whatever you are told
Well, 2+2 could equal 10 if you were in a base 4 system but I don’t think that is what they are talking about.
In Binary 1&1=3
binary systems are just plain biased and make people feel like they don’t fit in anywhere.
Great at Singles Bars though
Look up “Lysenkoism” and “Phrenology.”
Or just consider that positional notation and the concept of “zero” were the inventions of ARYANS (“white people”), masters at the time of the majority of the Indian subcontinent. These ideas must eventually be eliminated by the “woken.” (Not replaced by Roman numerals, though – maybe Aztec knots. Although they are the majority of the descendants of the ACTUAL Latin people, nasty Italians like Cristoforo Columbus are somehow not “Latinx.”)
According to Gad Saad, negative integers are to be eliminated because they reinforce the negations of racism.
And only equilateral triangles are to be allowed. The unequal sides of isosceles and scalene triangles reinforce unequalizing prejudice against minorities and LGBTQ people.
He says this is already being taught in some schools.
That’s how mathematics is harmed by political bias.
“And only equilateral triangles are to be allowed. The unequal sides of isosceles and scalene triangles reinforce unequalizing prejudice against minorities and LGBTQ people.
He says this is already being taught in some schools”
I’m a little naive Pat, just confirm for me that that this is a joke. It’s hard to tell these days the way the world has gone.
I’m only a relay here, Megs. I’ve not checked myself.
On the other hand, I’ve already seen academics embrace so many really fatuous ideas that I don’t put any of that math bushwah beyond them.
Regardless Pat, the world’s gone mad. The word ‘science’ is being attached to areas of work to which it simply does not belong.
That people can go from an ‘arts’ degree to speaking out as experts in other fields is just wrong. Surely it’s necessary to ‘do the hard yards’ to fully grasp a subject, to earn respect in your chosen field. How have Mathematicians and Scientists allowed politicians, journalists and people from other fields of interest to trash their integrity?
Society in general is being dumbed down to groupthink and nobody seems to speak out against it. We are becoming regressive followers, easily conned by people who have the gall to call themselves ‘Esteemed Professors’, even when the title doesn’t fit.
How are young people ever going to be able to distinguish the truth when throughout their entire education they are being fed so much propaganda and outright lies? How will they learn how to think for themselves when they are steered away from anything outside of the prescribed Marxist formula?
How did ‘extreme’ feminism come to infiltrate every aspect of life? Why is it pushed down our throats? Whatever happened to common decency, integrity, respect and ‘real’ tolerance? What happened to people taking responsibility for their own mistakes and failings? Why is it always someone else’s fault?
These are rhetorical questions Pat, I’m not expecting you to solve the problems of the world. Just venting.
Have they banned the ≠ sign yet ???
Fight them all the way, Megs. Be a public example of sanity.
Standing up to these people is the only way to prevent their taking power. They’re a minority. They won’t win if they’re strongly and widely opposed.
I no longer believe that scientists who accept Critical Race Theory or the evisceration of science in the name of equity have had their integrity trashed. I’ve encountered too many of them locked into progressive beliefs to sustain that view.
I now think that many scientists are mere methodological hacks. They know how to carry out research and even properly work with data. But they apparently do not understand the idea of science itself.
Science is another way of knowing and truly another way of being.
To be a scientist, as opposed to being a methodological hack, is to be consciously aware of the overwhelmingly important distinction between knowledge and opinion, between subjective and objective, of assigning assertions to the proper category, and of the absolutely central importance of strictly maintaining those distinctions.
Methodological hacks, no matter their brilliance, somehow do not recognize those distinctions as categorically orthogonal, and do not have them at the center of their being.
That leaves them vulnerable to the seductions of noble cause corruption and of the encomiums of socially applauded moral virtue.
They haven’t surrendered their integrity, Megs. As regards the commitment to science as the sine qua non of ethical principle, they never had it to surrender.
Just more post-modernist drivel from those who see the world as unfair since they are not as successful in life as others. I have a degree in math and find it appalling that SJWs are trying to destroy its very essence which is entirely objective and fact based including rigorous proofs. Even my own children were subjected to socialized math teaching programs that left them unable to deal with basic algebra without extensive tutoring at home.
This nonsense is driven by a demand for fairness as determined by equality of outcomes. Sadly, it is far easier to achieve equality of ignorance than equality of knowledge. The only possible genuine fairness is that of opportunity, but that doesn’t seen to be accepted by those in power in academia.
Wanton intentional ignorance is wanton intentional ignorance immaterial of how you label it.
Labeling such things is an attempt to separate ignorances out so you can maintain some while coping with others.
Pushing racism off as some grey area instead of learning enough logic, definitions and grammar to properly address it is bigotry.
Bigotry is a criminal act.
Bigotry is a part of human nature, just like tornadoes are a part of ‘climate’. Only Marxists believe that human nature can be morphed into Perfect Man, and Woman…
People are not perfect. People of all races have a lot of fears and this causes them to be suspect of others. It is a perfectly natural human emotion. It is a survival mechanism from our ancient past.
And considering where the world has been on race relations, we have come a *long* way from those bad times and it will get even better if given a chance.
The problem with radical Democrats is they don’t want to give good race relations a chance. They want to stir up race hatred because they think it benefits them politically. So they tear the nation apart in their efforts to gain political power. Critical race theory and the 1619 project are part of this stirring up of race hatred.
Our only salvation will be to vote the radical Democrats out of power as soon as possible.
It must be obvious to non-whites that this sick modern construct of the diversity/race snarl
is itself created, run and promoted by white, lefty Dems! Even the worst in the history of racism, such as the KKK, is largely a Democrat story.
Yes racism is ugly and its history repugnant. No one is trying to hide this fact. Vast strides have been made and continue to be made, but this ugly, divisive, disruption by ‘liberal’ whites serves no purpose in this process but to attempt to derail it for political gain. Their program at base is the worst form of racism in that the unstated assumption is that non-white races can’t speak for themselves, but must depend on white democrats to define the problems, create the institutions, plan the strategies and run the show. Dr. Martin Luther King didn’t need white Dems to plan and direct his campaign.
https://sealevel.info/intersectional_blah_blah_blah.html
“Science without intersectional feminism” ≝ “white supremacy”
∴ you are a white supremacist
Q.E.D.
A shocking number of academic fields are dominated by utter crackpottery. That problem is worst in very politicized fields, like climate science and “grievance studies,” but even the hard sciences and mathematics are under siege. When Scientific American runs an editorial against science, itself, you know the rot is very deep.
Not even engineering is safe. When the lunatics are in charge of the
asylum, er journals, the peer review system filters out the wheat and selects the chaff.“A shocking number of academic fields are dominated by utter crackpottery.”
Isn’t that the truth! And the above article is a good example of it.
These mathematicians sound like CNN reporters. My guess is CNN is where they got all those lies they are telling about Trump.
Tom
Look at the job titles of the signatories to get a sense of whether they are objective, or might have a personal bias the fogs their thinking.
Jpournalists at the NYT are demanding that one of their own be punished for writing an editorial critical of the 1619 project. Typically, they can’t refute anything written in the editorial, they are upset just that it is allowed to exist.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-union-1619-column-criticism
Earlier this year, many of these same “journalists” wanted senior staff to be fired because they allowed an editorial written by Tom Cotton to be printed. Once again, no attempt to refute anything written, just a demand that people they don’t like be silenced.
DB: regarding the Sci Am article:
It notes anecdote saying evolution would be proven false if we found “fossil rabbits in the pre-Cambrian.”
I don’t believe this is so. If we found a rabbit fossil in the pre-Cambrian, which I agree is very unlikely, I am sure Evolution believers would set to work on how to not accept the implications of this find.
A decade ago, someone found soft flesh in a dinosaur bone. A news story has a quote, “it is almost as if the fossil were not 100 million years old.” But not “We have to figure out how our million-year-old idea might be wrong.”
I cannot find a n article I saved years ago. In South America, in some rocks that supposedly pr-date the evolution of birds, they found fossilized bird tracks. The article wisely concluded, “either we are dating these rocks the wrong way, or we have the time frame of bird emergence wrong.”
But this study, which should have been earth-shattering news, was not widely noted.
12^3 / log e × 34% = 15
Therefore Critical Race Theory is wrong….
≈ 1352.8
https://www.google.com/search?q=(12%5E3)+%2F+log(e)+%C3%97+34%25+%3D
12^3 / log e × 34% = 42
When you already know the answer, everything can be forced to fit.
42? 42!!!
https://youtu.be/aboZctrHfK8 (humor)
There may be a slipped digit or two in the naming of the organization as I had seen similar comment attributed to some society of undergraduate mathematics support. Undergraduate ‘mathematics’ are struggling with arithmetic, as in “does 2+2= white 4 or black 5?”. Everyone knows that 4<5 so black is better, right?
What does this kerfuffle have to say for STEM, FemSTEM, AltSTEM, STEM Culture?
Who else here has a copy of Bronshtein & Semendyayev’s HANDBOOK OF MATHEMATICS (Verlag Harri Deutschland) right at hand?
Verlag Harri Deutsch- darn auto’correct’
“Who else here has a copy of Bronshtein & Semendyayev’s HANDBOOK OF MATHEMATICS (Verlag Harri Deutsch) right at hand?”
You need a political handbook to figure out what these mathematicians are saying. Here’s what they are really trying to say: “Orange Man Bad!”
No mathematics involved. Just emotions and delusions and cluelessness.
Strange that this should come to pass at a time when the so called system is more diverse and accommodating to ethnic minorities than ever before in history in any previous civilisation.
The truth is that the system is now so accommodating that a certain ethnic minority finds it tempting to ‘take the pi*s’ in order to gain unmerited advantages.
The corruption and debasement of Academe by CRT continues apace.
Are you surprised that scientists have fallen so easily, Graeme?
I confess that I was, at first. But no longer.
An example of that is that Michael Mann was never held accountable. The hockey stick is still used as a tool in the whole CCGW scam.
Social pressure is a very powerful thing. The Left has control of the mechanisms that create social pressure, such as the News Media and the Entertainment Media, and, obviously, this brainwashing is very effective, even on otherwise intelligent people. Smart people want to fit in, too.
Like they say in Japan: The nail in the floor that sticks up, gets hammered down. So most nails, even smart nails, lay low, and I imagine some of the smart nails convince themselves that distorting reality is a good thing. That way they can live with their own deceptions.
Happily, not all people are susceptible to this brainwashing.
I think this coming election is going to tell all of us where we stand. Just how many deluded people are out there in the great beyond? I think there would be a much smaller number of them if the Media told the truth rather than spreading Leftwing lies and propaganda like they do.
The lying Leftwing Media is the most dangerous organization on Earth right now. People cannot govern themselves properly if they are not given the truth. Govern themselves properly = Vote Republican! 🙂
And so dies the ideal that mathematics will be the common ground, logical starting point of communication with aliens ‘races’. ( I hate to even use that word. )
Maybe we’ll start with hip-hop, or body shaming on tentacle thickness instead. And they’ll just respond with force, the other universal language.
It’s 2020, after all.
Aliens and Humans meet. Will humans be suspicious of the aliens? Of course, they will. Will humans be afraid of the aliens? Of course, they will.
This is where racism comes from: Fear and suspicion. Humans don’t know the intentions of the Aliens so are naturally suspicious. The Aliens are guilty until proven innocent.
Humans apply this same thought process to unknown groups of other humans. They fear them and are suspicious of their motives and with good reason as, in the past, one group of humans frequently slaughtered other groups of humans.
So what is the cure for suspicion, fear and racism (stereotyping)? The cure is knowledge and understanding of unknown (to you) groups of humans (assuming their motives are pure). When we get together and learn from each other and understand each other and understand that we can have our differences but still be civil and kind to those who have other benign outlooks, then we can live without fear and suspicion.
It doesn’t help matters when the political Left and the Leftwing News Media constantly stir up race hatred and chaos. They add to fear and suspicion and they do it on purpose for political purposes.
Yeah, I think the way humans would look at alens is a pretty good analogy for how different groups of humans have looked at each other in the past. Fear of the unknown and suspicion at first. Get to know each other peacefully. Lose the fear and suspicion. Get along.
Tom
There is survival value in being wary of those things or people one does not understand. Therefore, racism, or perhaps more properly culturism, isn’t going to go away. That is, those who lose their fear of the unknown are at risk of being exterminated or subjugated. Only those who maintain a healthy concern for the unknown are likely to survive free. A deaf springbok will never hear the twig breaking under the paw of the approaching lion. Thus, one finds few, if any, deaf prey. They don’t live long.
“Get to know each other peacefully. Lose the fear and suspicion. Get along.”
Now that’s a novel idea Tom! I like it.
No one, I’m reading Carl Sagan’s “Contact” and thoroughly enjoying it. You’re post is appreciated.
“I would like to see examples of racist mathematics.”
Mathematics is full of, indeed almost totally consists of, racist mathematics, indeed it is a racist discipline.
Let me explain. A field or an observation in a field is racist if it originates with people exclusively of some races. It has nothing to do with the content of the observation or theory. To insist on demanding proof that some statements in a field are racist is to collude in racism, doubtless through unconscious bias, which can best be corrected in one of the many residential courses springing up nowadays.
Modern mathematics has originated with Greek, Chinese, Indian, Arab, European researchers. Do you notice some people are missing? A good proportion of the people of the planet, particularly from parts of the Far East, Australasia and Africa, are not included in the developers of modern mathematics. That makes it a racist discipline.
Actually the more I think about this, I see that it is not the only such discipline. Modern medicine appears to owe its origins to key figures who were mostly white and male. The railways and the steam engines which propelled them were innovated by racist white males. You may say that Stevenson and Watt were not racist?
That is because you have failed to understand, as with mathematics, that being racist is not a matter of what you said or did, but of who you are. Stevenson and Watt, and Lister for that matter, were of the racist race, so obviously they were racist.
Sewage is another of these deeply racist disciplines. Sewage was invented by the white racist slave owning Romans, and further innovated in Europe in London by a white male racist called Bazalgette.
I could go on and multiply examples. But clearly what we need as a society in our efforts to progress to socially equity and combat racism and climate change is for the profession of sanitary engineers, like the mathematicians, to admit the deep and unconscious racism of their professions, and reform their thoughts in the residential courses I have suggested will be so helpful.
Meanwhile, to show our understanding of the gravity of their inner prejudices, they should stop doing math and stop using toilets. I gather than in the home of progressive activism, San Francisco, great efforts are under way with considerable success on the last of these, the pavements having been utilized as toilets and the streets as open sewers. But it seems like mathematics is still being practised there, so we have a ways to go.
“racist if it originates with people exclusively of some races. “
Which it most certainly DID NOT !
“A good proportion of the people of the planet, particularly from parts of the Far East, Australasia and Africa”
Africans : David Blackwell, Etta Falconer, Benjamin Banneker, Katherine Johnson and many other brilliant names.
Could also name many from Australia, New Zealand etc etc
Maths is one of the most multi-cultural world-wide subjects around.
Things are ONLY racist if you CHOOSE to make them so.
Poe ‘s law in action.
Would someone who was not racist even notice that only certain people are associated with particular endeavors? There is an old saying, “It takes one to know one.”
Rutherford, perhaps?
That is a brilliant post, Michel!
Kind of explains a lot…
Mathematics is full of, indeed almost totally consists of, racist mathematics
…
I could go on and multiply examples
multiply is a racist mathematical term, since you chose to use it that means you are a racists! /sarc
Heads up; we need to get that pesky dictionary definition of racism which currently is; “the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another” and alter it to suit the leftard, dead-end narrative that “if something was invented by a particular culture it is racist”. Also, somehow we need to slip in a definition of a “racist race”.
What would that make white liberals who are convinced that minorities can’t succeed in life unless they are led and protected by white liberals?
woke
“and further innovated in Europe in London by a white male racist called Bazalgette.”
Thomas Crapper was most certainly an old white man, ie a sexist and a racist… ! 🙂
Does that mean that when a non-white person uses a crapper.
………. its cultural and racial appropriation ?
Indeed yes. One of the worst examples of cultural appropriation is the way some cultures outside Europe or the US have appropriated the concept of the printed circuit board, and incorporated it into their own folkways.
People get very excited about sombreros and tacos or jerk recipes, but cultural and social folkways like the PCB or the flush toilet, well! I mean, that is really vile, to have taken over such a vital part of another culture.
I recall while thinking of this that the automobile is racist, white and and heternormative too, and should be banned by all right thinking progressive states. Henry Ford. Otto Diesel. Alfred Sloan.
Need I say more? No, I don’t think so.
Banning automobiles is a goal of leftists. Mobility makes it difficult to control people.
Mass transit is a traditional hallmark of top down government.
“right thinking progressive states”
There is no such thing !
Not bad michel. Kudos!
Srinivasa Ramanujan
An Indian “peasant” who produced more mathematical theories than all his contemporaries and died at 33.
Unbelievable. The irrational and emotional leftist forces have even attained control of the MAA: A once great academic society. I should know. In the late 1970s, as a somewhat renowned math student at a major university, per the invitation of Pi-Mu-Epsilon, at a regional conference of the MAA I presented a well received paper on original mathematical work. Work that one math professor, trying to persuade me to go for a math PhD, said was a “dissertation.”
Like other commentators, I would like the MAA to provide examples of racism in math. If they can.
Example of racism in maths: When people use fingers to count, they very very rarely count on fingers of a different colour to their own.
Coming back to the article: the logic used to support the idea that maths is racist is seriously warped. The argument is that maths is racist because Greeks are perceived as white. Actually, not all Greeks, just two Greeks, namely Pythagoras and Pi. But Pi is thought by some to have been Egyptian, not Greek …
https://www.whoinventedit.net/who-invented-pi.html
… and Egypt is in Africa.
LOL!
“Unbelievable. The irrational and emotional leftist forces have even attained control of the MAA:’
Not really. It isn’t a statment by the MAA itself, but “A statement from the MAA Committee on Minority Participation in Mathematics.”
PS: Eric Worrall’s headline, “Mathematical Society of America Demands Critical Race Theory'” is very misleading and should be changed. And/or an explanatory note or subtitle should follow it, say that the demand is only from “the MAA Committee on Minority Participation in Mathematics.”
Unfortunately the MAA president and president-elect both signed it. The MAA’s membership needs to rise up and throw the traitors out.
We need to critically erase CRT. Should be a no-brainer. If you have one.
Mathematical Society of America seems to be providing evidence that it shouldn’t exist.
Is there anyone which going to miss them if they simply stop existing?
I tend to think there is a vast number of organizations which if they cease to exist, it should be an improvement.
What they are really demanding is that 2+2=5.
It’s worse than that. The want 2+2 to equal whatever you want it to be. Insisting that there is a right answer in the first place is so EuroCentric.
Gender fluid maths 🙂
“An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.”
Well you just have to put it in context-
“The social sciences are part of this community, helping us understand how to effectively communicate these practices to people, while also simultaneously analyzing our practices and policies with a critical lens. Critical race theory, referenced in recent Executive statements by the President of the United States, is an established social science inquiry which is grounded in decades of scholarship.”
Once you have an established social science enquiry like that you do as they tell you because they’re the establishment now. They’ve looked at it all through a critical lens so what more proof do you need?
JUST STICK TO MATHEMATICS, bozos !!
The social “scientists” lacked the intelligence to do math, but somehow they managed to bring the MAA down to their level.
Mathematical Society of America has apparently turned into an egotistic election modifier.
Very much in line with the Facebook/Twitter correctional facility:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/twitter-joins-facebook-in-effort-to-censor-election-related-posts_3533620.html