Incorporating Race, Gender, and Class Issues into a Critical Mathematica Literacy Curriculum

Abstract

A few years ago I arrived home from a short trip to discover galleys in the mail (due back the day before I returned) for a journal article I had written on teaching a non-rote college arithmetic class. It had been years since I had submitted the article, and even though the deadline had passed I proofread the galleys. I was infuriated to find significant editorial changes about which I had not been consulted and which only a careful reading would reveal. The editor had removed the real-life statistics I had included on Black/White unemployment and infant mortality comparisons. Further, in what I believe was an attempt to neutralize my point about the continued effects of racism in our society, the editor had inserted an additional sentence at the end of a particular section (which is italicized in Figure I below). I immediately called the journal and vented my fury, screaming about censorship and shouting even more statistics which show that, when educational level is held constant, the picture of the continued effects of racism in our society is even more dreadful. However, it turned out that the person at whom I was yelling was the new editor (and, I learned later, a Black woman). Once I explained to her the importance of the changes that the former editor (a White woman and a political conservative) had made, the additional offensive sentence was deleted.