On this episode of Relatively Prime, Michole Enjoli and Noelle Sawyer take over for Black in Math Week. They talk to Brea Ratliff and José Vilson, two Black math educators, and discuss what it’s like to be Black in math, what they would say to people making common false statements about Black students in math, and better hopes and dreams for Black students.
Black in Math week is November 8th – 13th, 2020! It’s a week on Twitter to celebrate community among and uplift Black mathematicians. Check us out @BlackInMath for updates!
Brea is currently pursuing a PhD at Auburn University in Math Education. She is the founder of and CEO Me to the Power of Three and is a past president of the Benjamin Banneker association.
José is located in New York City and is the founder and executive director of EDUcolor. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Teachers College at Columbia University in Sociology and Education.
We talk a bit about Afrofuturism in this episode. If you’re interested in checking out more on Afrofuturism, try SpaceBox, a STEM escape room to save astronauts from a virus, and this special minizine from Bitten Magazine!
This is Relatively rime Black in Math Week in the mathematical domain. I’m one of your host, Michole Enjoli.
We’e here as a part of Black and Math Week to talk to some Black math educators. I’m actually an assistant professor of math at Southwestern university in Georgetown, Texas. So I, myself, am a math educator, I’m from The Bahamas and I’ve also got a few teachers in my family line there. So education has got a special place in my heart.
And again, Michole Enjoli, I’m a mathematician, educator ,and STEM edutainment producer. I originally hailed from Atlanta, Georgia, and Seattle, Washington, but now I’m in Ann Arbor working on my PhD in math education. I also have a lot of educators in my family and I always like to make it be known that I’m an educator before mathematician.
I talked to Bria Ratliff for this podcast and I asked her how she introduces herself to strangers. If you’re sitting next to a stranger in the before times, right. When we did that and someone and someone asked you, like, what do you do? How do you answer them?
Um , generally I say that I’m a mathematics educator and can we go back for a minute? Cause the before times, and the Hunger Games was reference just really gives me life right now. (laughs) Um, that that pretty much is mathematics or STEM educator, I think is probably the best collective term for all the things that I do. And I’m involved with. I have been an administrator and a coach and currently delving deeper into research and have been a research coordinator and whatnot for a while. And I have my own business also, I’m consulting on mathematics and STEM, but at the heart of what I do, I am a mathematics educator.
Brea is in the math education doctoral program at Auburn university. Right now. She’s also the founder of Me to the Power of Three, which specializes in curriculum development and designing educational programs. They’ve done work for the Dallas Cowboys stadium and she’s a past president of the Benjamin Banneker association.
And I took the time to talk to José Bilson and I also asked him, because he lives in New York city. If he’s ever on the train or walking down the street, how does he introduce himself as strangers?
Usually I tell them my name is José Vilson. I’ve been, before this year I was a math teacher for the better part of 15 years. In addition, I am also the executive director of EduColor an organization dedicated to race, class and education, but also as a proud father, husband, and any number of other roles that I take on a daily basis.
And Noelle, let me tell you, José is a dope math educator, but he’s also the founder and executive director of EduColor color. And he’s currently pursuing a PhD at Teacher’s college at Columbia university in sociology and education. But before he was doing his PhD, I thought he was already a doctor because we met a couple of years ago at the CIME conference at MSRI. So CIME is a conference in mathematics education and MSRI is a mathematical sciences research Institute. And for anyone who’s listening, I’ll say this again at the end, please follow José on Twitter. You will be enlightened every single moment,
Even though Brea and José both have these really cool jobs and backgrounds, I was kind of curious
What were you’re curious about?
Whether or not people still make the statement that all math people are tired of hearing. Do people still respond and say, Oh, I hate math. (Laughing)
I’m sure you hear that all the time. It’s, it’s, it’s still such a pervasive thought across, um, society. So I think we really have to do better about the messaging with that. Admittedly though, there is, there is some eliteism that does come with saying that you are a math person and I think we’d be lying if we didn’t recognize that. But at the same time, if we’re wanting more people to come into the mathematics space, then we have to really find ways to help them understand. There is really no such thing as a math person. That’s that is false.
You know, I’ve always been a solidarity with folks who hate math. Like even though I know I personally have done well, well, I can only say that up until undergrad, but for the most part I’ve done well in math. It’s really reasonable to know why people have hard feelings around it. Now I think about a lot of the violence that can happen in a math classroom, especially, especially for Black students in America. You know, their bodies are often looked at in similar ways that we see on the streets. We think about police reform and police brutality that’s happening to Black people.
So when we talk about policing Black bodies in the classroom, like, are we also talking about the actual police here.
In some instances we are. And if you were to do a quick YouTube search, which I honestly hate to put this out here to even have to put anyone to witnesses this, but you can find several videos where there are police officers, throwing Black students to the ground in a math classroom, in a math classroom. Why the police even there in the first place in these Black communities, and not even always in Black communities, you know, and we see that happening, but there’s also things happening in a way that we’re teaching math education. That’s very behavioral and policing the way that Black students show up and do mathematics in the classroom. There’s a study that I’ve read before in my own research that shows, the second grade teachers were significantly more likely to judge their Black female students’ math abilities solely on their behavior. Second grade Noelle.
they said the students were getting up moving or whatever, and they’re not answering their questions all the time. We talking about second graders who were always running around, having to use the bathroom every 10 minutes. They were being policed way more in that way than on their knowledge. So me and José talked about this in relation to his work that he does with EduColor.
In the service of Black children. I think that’s pretty much where we center so much of our work because we work directly with them and specifically talking about how anti-Blackness shows up even amongst people of color, generally, even amongst Black folks, right? The idea that for example, our pedagogies have to be super regimented and make sure everybody like, sits in rows in aisles to address those kids, make sure that they like follow whatever that, that like a champion nonsense is. And I know the name of it. I just rather not validate it, but I think, I think it’s just so fascinating because like so many of the schools that educators of color are being pushed towards now are some of the same schools that their business model is based off segregation. It’s very much like we will serve your children. We will give them resources through our hedge fund managers. But that in turn you have to sacrifice their liberties. You have to sacrifice the idea that they deserve to be able to be in control of their hands and control their eyes and control of their own voices. Like they have to sacrifice those levels of control. And it’s not to say that public schools don’t often have similar situations, but it is to say that the things that you can get away with when it’s not as accountable to the public, you’re able then to push down Black kids because you know that the general public doesn’t really care that much about Black kids humanity, as much as they care about pretending like they’ve solved some sort of gap.
And honestly, how could they have solved anything when here we are during COVID and surprise, all of these problems are even worse now. And Brea also had something to say about that.
There are children every day who are just getting further and further behind academically because COVID has exacerbated this opportunity that, that we’ve had for a very, very long time. And disproportionately it is affecting Black and Brown children. It’s affecting children who are in poor communities. But the thing is we, we, we knew that. And if we, the frustrating thing is that we’ve, many of us have been trying to tell people that and talk about how we could address these issues. Well, before we got here and we’re still here, um, (sigh).
I’ve found that oftentimes people who don’t actually want to help think that by acknowledging an issue exists, like they have done their part, (laughter) Right? Like, Hey, yes, you, what I do agree. I see that there are these problems and then they just want to move on in the meeting.
It’s like, uh, that did nothing for me, but add more salt to this wound that I, Yeah.
You know, there’s already so many barriers in place for Black students as it is. And even from my own experience as a mathematician and as a Black woman for all the 26 years I’ve been alive. It’s constantly feeling like to get all the things I want in life. I’m having to work twice as hard for what a lot of white folks are getting, or have.
Brea actually mentioned this as well. And Michole you’re a grad student, I’m just out of grad school. She mentioned that as a grad student she always felt like she had to put her best foot forward all the time.
I also felt this pressure to be Benjamin Banneker association Me to the Power of Three, Brea Ratliff all the time and not make mistakes. And, and yeah, so I, I did, I did feel that way. So I, the other major thing for me, I am a Christian and I’m a believer. And so my faith is at the bedrock of all of these things for me. And so having to lean on my faith in a new way was, was first I think the most important thing, being able to say, to say out loud that this is what I’m experiencing, what I’m feeling and that it’s real was the second of being able to reach out to others for the support that I needed is helping me. Cause we’re, we’re still working through this.
A word. I so feel where she’s coming from. It’s almost like there’s this thin line between the goals that I may want in this world as a Black female, mathematician and having to be a perfectionist in which one of those are really tiring all the time.
I would even say both of those are really tired all the time, right.
Brea actually pointed out something, that’s amazing. Her advisor is actually a Black woman. And so that gives her the space to feel vulnerable while she’s in grad school. So shout out to Dr. Strutchens
Before even being in this grad school space, I think just being a Black woman, a successful Black woman, there’s, there’s so much armor that you have to put on to be successful in a space. And this is one of the first times in a long time where I have the opportunity to kind of like take my armor off. And it feels, it feels foreign. I don’t take it off for everybody. (laughter) But it feels foreign to have someone say that this space right now is a space where it’s about you. This is your time to contribute to that, to learn literature, to contribute to it, to learn how to be a mathematics education researcher. And I’ve got your back.
You know, something very relevant. So this past week I had a meeting with one of my mentees, Olivia, and she’s a math major over at Western Washington University. So she had this assignment that I gave her to read through one of the articles by Dr. Nicole Joseph a real dope scholar out at Vanderbilt does work on Black girl wood, but Olivia had read her article entitled Black women’s and girl’s persistence in the P-20 mathematics pipeline, two decades of children, youth, and adult education research. So as Olivia was reading this article, she found this perfect quote out of it, which is very relevant to what Brea was saying. It read, “Black women at the graduate level benefit from the mentorship of Black women faculty who often provide instrumental and psycho social support.” Personally, Black women have guided me my entire life, Noelle and I’m sure you can say the same thing. When I think about all the women that I grew up with here in Atlanta and in Seattle for my mom, my aunt, my godmom’s were all very involved. And even my mentors like LaDawn Blackett Jones, Tianna Hawkins, Amber Willis, Black women around me and supporting, even if they weren’t in mathematics at all, it is how much that really means for my own success. Noelle, what has your experience been like with Black women and mentors?
If we’re talking about pre-college, like Black women mentors. I had a ton of them because I’m from the Bahamas there was no shortage. And like I mentioned, I’ve got a lot of teachers in my family. Like my mom was a teacher, one of my grandmothers and even more, like, along that line. So there was no shortage, but in college I can name exactly one, uh, Ja’Wanda Grant who was the head of the Quantitative Teasoning center at the time, not in either department I was doing a major in, but she was the Black woman mentor available to me. And when I got to grad school there weren’t Black women. Like I was the Black woman and it wasn’t until a year ago that I even found Black women in math to be friends and mentors. Like some of them are on the Black and Math team. I’ve got Candice and Marissa, for sure. And Michole, we didn’t even meet until 2018.
Yeah and we’ve been in the same field all these years before then, just now meeting, but it also leaves me wondering what other Black women out there, who I have not had the opportunity to engage with and meet specifically in mathematics because we are such a small population as is. So I am again, very happy that we’re going to Black and Math week, cause there’s already a larger community just boiling around right now. You know, uh, so far through this podcast with Black and Math week, we’ve talked a lot about the barriers that we’ve seen come in place for Black students in mathematics at all ages. We’ve talked about the way that our bodies may have been policed in the math classroom, especially when you think about the way that we’re assessing how Black students have math knowledge and abilities, but how important it is for us to also have this mentorship and mentorship specifically from people of the same race or same background that we can identify and relate to in different ways, how important that is. And we didn’t mention any of José’s mentors but know if you’ve been a mentor to José, if he sees you and loves you, and we love you for loving him. Now, we’re going to play a game that Noelle and I came up with that was a lot of fun to do with our guests on the podcast. And it’s called the counter narrative game. So I’m going to well me and Noella are going to present different counter narratives our guests about Black students and mathematics. And to be very clear, we both believe these statements are very false, but we wanted to hear what our guests would give as a counter narrative to show how false these statements are. Think of it like a proof by contradiction.
Yeah. The way I actually presented this to Brea was how would you respond if someone stood up and asked you this question when you’re on a panel or at a workshop or something, and the first statement to counter is someone describing Black students in math as being at risk?
Well, my first question would be at risk for what.
You know, at risk. Wink (laughter)
The only thing that I think Black students are at risk of is being treated as if they don’t belong in this space. I think they’re at risk of losing their confidence and at risk of not being seen for all of the brilliance that they bring to our institution, because some people have negative beliefs about who they are. So I would recommend that we really confront our own thinking about what it means to, to be at risk first and then think about how we can support our Black students.
Right? Why would we be talking about being at risk and not talking about how to fix it?
Why, why is education so risky? Like who put the risk? Like who created the gap? There’s a, there was a recent study that showed that like, if this country actually decided to invest in reparations, when it was supposed to, then that gap would have been closed already. So anything, when you tell people that folks are at risk, you’re basically saying that not only did you destroy the safety net, that’s supposed to catch them in the ways that that say our white wealthy counterparts have. You’re also saying that you’re not going to fortify the rope by which they are hanging. And I do mean that in any number of ways, right? So. (laughter)
It’s, it’s not only is it unfair, it is systemically oppressive for anyone to say that these kids are at risk. Like that, yhat just means that our country and our systems have done an awful job, um, and probably intentionally to make sure that they were at risk.
Right and if we’re not at risk, we’re exceptional. Right.
And there we are having to defend ourselves because we’re good at something. And that’s something else we actually brought up in this counter narrative game again.
Yeah. So our next statement for our guests was when Black students are doing well, they aren’t exceptional in math, like a unicorn. I mean, yes, we’re magical, but (laughter).
That’s such harmful thinking. Brea actually came in with some fire for her response.
I’ll be honest. My initial response is I want to be, I want to say how offended I am that you would believe that about Black children.
Because what we need to do and understand is that being a mathematician and being someone who is successful in mathematics, it’s, there’s no, there’s no one way to learn how to do that. There’s no one way to succeed in doing so. People aren’t born as exceptional mathematicians. We’re supposed to know and believe that. And so if I’m providing students with, or if I’m helping students understand mathematics using a variety of methods and doing so when they’re proving success, then why would we not use that with more of our students? Why would we not encourage more students to become successful in mathematics, by broadening the way that we teach or broadening the way that they experienced mathematics? So instead of saying that, looking at this data and saying that these students are exceptional because of this particular methodology or this particular, um, because they, they just had something, I guess, that, that other students didn’t it. Why would we not make that available to all students?
You know, that’s just like what you were saying earlier, Noelle , about students of, we know they’re at risk and we have ways to fix it. Why aren’t we just fixing it? If some style of teaching is working to make those Black students perform exceptionally why no just try it with more students.
I mean, there’s probably something a little bit, uh, political behind this, Michole, right? Because teaching Black students, as we know, is political. Some people might not think so, which is why it’s the next statement in our counter narrative game? Like, what do you say if someone says to you math is not political.
Let me get in my bag, I want to focus on the Black experience here, but it applies to all, this is a country in which it was illegal for enslaved people to read and write and do math. So if that is true, which it is, then inherently, that means education is political.
Okay. I can tell Jose is about to go in on this.
Our so-called founding fathers, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, while they stood on different sides of the political spectrum, both believed in a public education. But we also recognize that the vast majority of founding fathers were also slave owners. So if this is also true, which it is, that means that this country was founded on the idea that yes, education should be given to everybody, but that if you believe that Black people are human beings, which they are, b ut to them not so. You know, this country is already telling people that there’s a set of people who do not deserve education. And so that is a political statement. And so at any given moment, when you want to teach Black kids to do math, you are doing a political thing because you are going against the narratives that have been the bedrock of this country.
Whew, man speak on it. Who’s country? He is making some points and I know he’s got to keep going
As a teacher because of the beliefs of the founding fathers, because of everything that happened since then, including reconstruction, civil rights movement. And by the way, not just in the fifties and sixties, I mean like the entire thing from 19 hundreds, all the way on up. So maybe even the 1970s with the Black power movement, the idea that you, as an educator can go into a classroom that is state sponsored, where you get your state licensure, and you are given a set of standards that was approved by the state means that you are agents of that state. And so you go into a state sponsored building as a state sponsored agent with state sponsored standards with state sponsored textbooks. That means that you are a political agent. It doesn’t mean that you are a partisan mind you. You could be, and God forbid, you could be a Trump loving Republican who goes into inner city schools and believe yourself to be somebody who’s trying to do good for Black and Brown kids. Fine. But that is still political. Like you could be a political atheist. You could be somebody who libertarian, who doesn’t believe in any of the spectrum. You could. All that. But the minute you sign that contract and you start collecting money from the state, right, to teach kids that makes you political. And even if you are in a private school, that means that that private school is on public land, which was given to make sure that that school was built, and you still have to go through any number of licensures to become a private school, public school, charter school, whatever, right. That that’s a state thing, that is a political statement. Like even just wanting kids to learn, whoever it is, ends up being political, but even more so for Black kids because Black kids weren’t allowed to do so they weren’t allowed to learn as a state law. So that’s what I would have to say to that.
Imagine thinking any kind of education isn’t political, when discussions about whether or not Black people are people aren’t even that far in the past. I mean, imagine.
And this history really keeps coming back to haunt us at this point.
Here we are, again, when we look at particularly the schooling of, of Black children and mathematics in particular, I know that for us, with desegregation, a lot of things changed. A lot of things actually became worse for Black children because when we were often in our own schools, there was just a lot of there’s always academic excellence and, and support. And, um, I was reading someone’s work who talked about how there were, there was evidence that we, we already been doing at the high school level algebra, geometry, and, and studying other things that many white communities had not been doing. And so then when we desegregated, it was amazing that while we actually were advanced in mathematics, the perceptions and that bias about what Black students could do, they still started to put us off in, in other courses and in lower level classes. And so we are essentially, we’re seeing the fruit of a lot of political decisions. Oh, if mathematics isn’t political, for any other reason, we’re seeing the fruit of political decisions from the last 60, well last 400 years if we want to be honest. (laughter)
So I want to do a quick shout out about EduColor, which is an organization founded by José Vilson. So EduColor mobilizes advocates nationwide around issues of educational equity, agency, and justice. They amplify the works and ideas of students, educators, and communities of color through supportive on and offline networks and professional development.
So what we found with EduColor is like, we not only have to think about the policy side and not only the pedagogy side, but then how those two come together in order to create a more human experience for so many of our children, because so many of our school systems are doubling down on the idea that our Black kids don’t deserve, for example, to have a full set of, of learnings. That they don’t deserve art, they don’t deserve music, they don’t deserve dance. And then when they do, they only deserve the types of things that, you know, will allow them into like the, the, the white hemisphere. Right. So, Oh yeah. We’re going to make sure that these kids get this sort of learning, but this learning that they’re doing already in the streets that they’re doing at their own homes. It’s not that valid because it’s not going to get them into the white spaces. It’s not going to bolster their resumes. It’s not going to do all the things that like are white validating or whatever have you. So we have a whole 12 of schooling that consistently reinforces white norms on Black kids, instead of trying to find ways to get, uh, Black learning into, into the spaces and making sure that their learnings come into the things that we’re trying to do as adults. So it’s a whole reframing and EduColor hopes to be in the forefront of making sure that happens.
You know, he’s bringing up a great point about de-centering whiteness in our education. What would it be like to just talk about what kind of math education would be great for us by us? FUBU! (laughter)
Well, I’m happy to tell you Noelle there is a genre that already exists for that known as Afrofuturism Afrofuturism is where we can look at our historical realities as Black people, and imagine where we can go based on our strengths and not just the negative parts of the injustice that have been done to us in America and beyond, but to say, “Hey, we can actually do way more than what the history books have tried to describe our lives.”
So I last question for José and Brea was, imagine you’re writing your own, Afrofuturist stories. And it’s that 50 years from today, 2070. And it’s about a Black main character. What does their perfect math experience look likein your story? Considering everything that’s going on right now, even with COVID and virtual education 50 years from now, what would be the best situation for a Black student in math?
I think one of the first things is a shift in the focus that we have on, on testing in schools. I think the testing focus has really driven, um, which is a big policy, has driven a lot of, of how classrooms are structured and how students are move through mathematics and how teachers teach mathematics. So I think the individualized learning for mathematics well, for most subjects but particularly for mathematics is really, it can be liberating for a lot of students. And that’s not something that’s really widely acceptable. You could be using technology to do that right now, but I think in the next 50 years, if we could figure out how to just stop teaching to a whole groups of students and start looking at students as individuals, I think that’s one way to rehumanize mathematics. A lot of people are able to identify patterns that exist in this world and are willing to explore and investigate. And if we could nurture more of that through mathematics consistently through K-12 and, and the college level, then yeah, you’d see more little girls, more little Brea Noelles that just, just gravitate towards it. And don’t see it just as a means to an end or something that they need in to get into college or get into grad school or to get into a particular career. So I think if, if we can, yeah, we, we have to, we have to liberate mathematics. We have to liberate mathematics. And I, I want to say that there’s the people who are doing good work in those areas already. It’s just not widespread or as widespread as it needs to be. And I think that, that the policies, the testing in particular is probably one of the greatest hindrances towards that. I know that there are teachers who really do believe in children, and there are people that are, are doing some, some good things, but they often feel hindered by many of the things that they are required to do. And if some of those barriers didn’t exist, then I think we’d see some more inventive mathematics.
And a lot of this inventive mathematics that Brea is referring to and imagining I’m sure has also already happened. What then a lot of the math in African culture and broader Black culture that we may just not have any access to. And imagine if we could tap into those, to all of those, like wells of knowledge in mathematics, and what’s, it’s taken into our futures.
I mean, Black and Brown people I’ve been doing math fo, forr forever, right? I just, I feel like we could run a whole class on math that white people.
Girl, a whole university. Well, we could also have a whole university about all the mathematics that we could learn from other cultures, especially from the continent of Africa and all the countries that are on that land. And José actually has a lot more, he can say on that.
There is a whole continent of Africa that had already conceptualized things around calendars and angles and structures and geometries that, you know, a lot of folks did not appreciate. And so in, in my mind it would be no longer dangerous to say things like my people had a way of doing this that was more efficient and more responsive to their environment. So thinking about how so many libraries and so many structures have been burned down, right? Like that’s, like that’s what you’re kind of like, you know, highlighting for me is that we, we have to reckon with that which already happened. Right. And then starting from this point on, I would love, for example, for Black, Black students specifically to say, you know, like we’re gonna work with this two plus two equals four. We can try to agree on that. But then where that takes me in my journey towards fulfillment doesn’t necessarily have to be the same thing that you want to do, but it does have to be responsive to the things that I want to reach and how I want to reach them. That’s the different praxis, just straight up then what we have now. And then that teachers would ultimately be able to learn how to play with the power dynamics that are often in the classroom highlighting folks like Paulo Freire, which by the way, like, it’s love the work. It’s not new work. Like every, teacher’s a student, every student a teacher, there’s always a thing that we can learn back and forth, right? Like the Bible teaches you that, doesn’t it.
And that is all the time we have for this episode of Relatively Prime. We need to thank José and Brea for speaking with us and the National Math Festival for sponsoring this episode. This takeover, a Relatively Prime is a part of Black and Math Week. You can find this and updates on Twitter @BlackInMath. We would also like to thank Krishmusic for the use of their music. In this episode, you can find them on SoundCloud or in the show notes at RelPrime dot com.
We also really need to thank Relatively Prime’s patrons on Patreon without y’all the show would not exist. If you want to and are able to contribute, you can head over to patreon.com/relprime to pledge a little bit for episode. Though, if you are not able to, that is totally fine. Just listening is more than enough.
If you want to learn more about the intersection of Afrofuturism and mathematics education, check out SpaceBox from Stimulation Escape room. It’s an immersive escape room experience where you have to help six Black astronauts who have fallen ill in space. You can learn more as stimulationescaperoom.org.
Finally Relatively Prime is licensed under Creative Commons, attribution share alike license. So if you decide to reuse it, you have to license it in the same way. Otherwise have some fun. Thank you all so much for listening and as always, and please know Samuel is making us say this have a matherrific month y’all. (Laughter).
This is a matherrific time.
All of that is staying in. All of it.
