A math education professor in New York City claimed that the equation 2+2=4 “reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.”
“The idea that math (or data) is culturally neutral or in any way objective is a MYTH. i’m ready to move on with that understanding. who’s coming with me?” Brooklyn College professor of math education Laurie Rubel tweeted last week to her roughly 1,200 followers.
the idea that math (or data) is culturally neutral or in any way objective is a MYTH. i’m ready to move on with that understanding. who’s coming with me? #takebackmath
— Laurie Rubel (@Laurie_Rubel) August 3, 2020
“Along with the ‘of course math is neutral because 2+2=4’ trope are the related (and creepy) ‘math is pure’ and ‘protect math.’ reeks of white supremacist patriarchy. i’d rather think on nurturing people & protecting the planet (with math in service of them goals),” she continued.
along with the “of course math is neutral because 2+2=4” trope are the related (and creepy) “math is pure” and “protect math.”
reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.
i’d rather think on nurturing people & protecting the planet (with math in service of them goals) ?❤️??
— Laurie Rubel (@Laurie_Rubel) August 4, 2020
The tweets grabbed the attention of others within academia, including Harvard Ph.D. candidate Kareem Carr, who said, “People say it’s subjectivism to ask if math is Western. I don’t get that. It’s an objective fact that some groups were more involved in the creation of modern math than others. They may have been *trying* to make it objective but it’s not stupid to ask if they actually succeeded!”
One academic, James Lindsay, pushed back against Reubel’s tweets, saying that the simple math equation of 2+2=4 helped lead to significant scientific feats.
“It’s certainly the case, and the Woke need to be held firmly to the point, that feats of engineering like space travel and rocketry utterly depend upon accepting stable meanings of mathematical statements like 2+2=4 as objectively true, not mere accidents of culture,” Lindsay tweeted.
Rubel’s tweets come after Rutgers University’s English department declared that proper grammar is racist earlier this summer.
The school’s English department will alter its grammar standards to “stand with and respond” to the Black Lives Matter movement, and the department’s head said that the program will hold “workshops on social justice and writing,” increase the “focus on graduate student life,” and incorporate “‘critical grammar’ into our pedagogy” in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the resulting calls to end racism and police brutality.
