University of Illinois at Chicago
Since the middle of the twentieth century, there have been at least three major moments of mathematics education reform. Despite increasing equity- and inclusion-oriented rhetoric across each of these reforms, implied promises of equity and inclusion for Black learners, collectively, have not come to fruition. Many Black learners continue to experience inhumane and emotionally violent mathematics education. I extend my previous race-critical analyses of mathematics education to suggest that equity for Black learners in mathematics education is a delusion rooted in the fictions of white imaginaries and characterized at best by incremental changes that do little to threaten the maintenance of racial hierarchies inside or outside of mathematics education. In making this claim, I foreground white supremacy, antiblackness, citizenship, and desegregation to offer critical analyses of equity and inclusion.
Danny Bernard Martin is Professor of Education and Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). His research has focused on understanding the salience of race and identity in Black learners’ mathematical experiences. He is author of the book Mathematics Success and Failure Among African Youth (2000, Erlbaum), editor of Mathematics Teaching, Learning, and Liberation in the Lives of Black Children (2009, Routledge), co-editor of The Brilliance of Black Children in Mathematics: Beyond the Numbers and Toward New Discourse (2013, Information Age), and co-author of The Impact of Identity in K–8 Mathematics Learning and Teaching (2013, NCTM).