Undergraduate Seminar: "Scaffolded Learning: Socialization, Structures, and Systemic Racism in Mathematics Spaces"

Abstract: This past year-- and the past few months in particular-- have brought racial reckoning into acute focus in the United States. In the wake of this summer’s high-profile murders of Black folks, a surge of antiracism and awareness efforts began to crop up globally. One such movement that was particularly prolific in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) academic spaces was this June’s #ShutDownAcademia and #ShutDownSTEM. One of the focuses of this movement was to encourage and hold accountable non-Black people to “do the work to eradicate racism and create a just, equitable and inclusive STEM field” (ShutDownSTEM, 2020). As critical mathematics education scholars, we understand how difficult this work is, and how difficult it is to find a balance between creating better and more diverse and inclusive environments in the here and now, and working towards dismantling the broader systems and structures we are socialized in-- particularly in mathematics spaces-- as we dream of a more liberatory future. In this talk, which is a follow-up to our Impostor Syndrome workshop for Girls Talk Math (Turner & Lue, 2020), we discuss the differences between individual, micro-level actions, and the macro-level, radical changes that are required of us to enact and effect sustainable, real change. We then theorize how this work might-- and indeed, must-- be bridged, and using our autoethnographic work (Lue & Turner, 2020) as a grounding example. 

Host: Adeli Hutton