Equity Discourse in Mathematics Education as an Exercise in White Benevolence

• In Event: 44.070 - Interrogating Whiteness in Mathematics Education

Abstract

Although mathematics education as an enterprise has been addressing the idea of equity for nearly 35 years, inequities related to opportunities to learn mathematics persist. Attention to equity in some form has become nearly standard in mathematics education and there has been a proliferation of such discourse in the community, but progress has been negligible. In this conceptual paper, I posit that one reason that equity’s progress has not kept pace with the growth of equity discourse is that this discourse is grounded in liberalism and white benevolence.
Critical race theory (CRT) levies a critique of liberalism as one of its core tenets. Liberalism relies on the idea that progress (i.e., racial progress) is incremental, where each small step is a move toward a distant future sans racism. CRT argues that this slow approach to change is ineffective because “racism requires sweeping changes” for which liberalism is not equipped (Ladson-Billings, 1998, p. 12). Equity discourse in mathematics education represents a liberal effort toward incremental change in which well-intended—and largely white—mathematics educators attempt to better conditions for students of color within current structures of mathematics education. However, there is a resistance to making the more serious, sweeping, or violent changes necessary to redress persistent inequities (Martin, 2015).
White benevolence extends from liberalism as the incremental progress proposed represents a form of colonialism in which whiteness, through a desire for diversity, grants access to pieces of education, a white property (Martin, 2015; Patel, 2015). In this case, white benevolence manifests as a desire for diversity in access to mathematics education, a white institutional space (Martin, 2011). Author (2013) argues that access to mathematics represents “a possessive investment in whiteness” (p. 333). To date, equity discourses have focused on access to mathematics and, thus, have encouraged Black and Brown students to make an investment in whiteness.
In this paper, I argue that the equity discourse in mathematics education cannot actually achieve its stated aims of inclusion because of its refusal to make the drastic foundational changes required to create a mathematics education that is not rooted in whiteness. I propose that a first step toward resolution is to shift focus from creating equity in mathematics education toward addressing inequities. Equity is a worthy goal, but it requires an intention toward creating an equal playing field by attempting to either equalize or neutralize privilege. This approach forecloses on nuanced strategies that bring forward the particular needs of communities that have been historically excluded from full access to mathematics and that make visible the fact that, in order for these communities to have access to mathematics, mathematics itself must be reconsidered. In contrast, a focus on inequities created and maintained by current systems of mathematics education makes visible the ways in which mathematics devalues certain bodies and minds. This visibility then creates the opportunity for de/reconstructing mathematics education in a way that allows for mathematics educators to do the work of redress and restorative justice (McCluskey et al., 2008).

Author

• Erika C. Bullock, University of Wisconsin - Madison