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THE RACIAL CONTEXTS OF MATHEMATICS EDUCATION: TOWARD GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
Danny Bernard Martin College of Education and Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science
University of Illinois at Chicago
1040 W. Harrison Street Chicago, IL 60607 312.413.0304
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THE RACIAL CONTEXTS OF MATHEMATICS EDUCATION: TOWARD GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
Danny Bernard Martin
University of Illinois at Chicago
Abstract The ubiquity and persistence of racism, in all its forms on a global scale, stems from the fact that the meanings for race are created, politically contested, and re‐created in any given sociohistorical and geopolitical context as a way to maintain boundaries of difference related to domination and oppression (Omi & Winant, 1994). No matter what country—the United States, South Africa, Brazil, India, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and throughout the European Union—these meanings emerge to shape all the social structures in a given society, including mathematics education. I argue for more explicit attention to the ways that mathematics education is situated within the prevailing racial conditions of a given society and how mathematics education contributes to and responds to those conditions. Keywords Race and Racism – Mathematics Education – Global Context
1. Introduction
The ubiquity and persistence of racism, in all its forms on a global scale, stems from the fact that
the meanings for race are created, politically contested, and re‐created in any given sociohistorical
and geopolitical context as a way to maintain boundaries of difference related to domination and
oppression (Omi & Winant, 1994). No matter what country—the United States, South Africa, Brazil,
India, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and throughout the European Union—these meanings
emerge to shape all the social structures in a given society, including mathematics education. In this
paper, I draw on the theory of racial formation (Omi & Winant, 1994; Winant, 2001, 2004) to argue
for more explicit attention by researchers to the ways that mathematics education, across global
contexts, has come to be situated within the racial histories, prevailing racial conditions and
practices, and web of social meanings for race that have emerged in various societies.
Racial formation refers to “the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created,
inhabited, transformed and destroyed” (Omi & Winant, 1994, p. 55). Racial formation theory
acknowledges that the concept of race is a sociopolitical construction and has no biological basis
3
but that it does have real consequences, in the form of racism, in the lives of marginalized,
subordinated, and oppressed groups.1
This perspective also suggests that historically situated racial projects emerge to “connect what
race means in a particular discursive practice and the ways in which both social structures and
everyday experiences are racially organized, based on that meaning” (p. 56). According to
sociologists Omi and Winant (1994), a racial project is “simultaneously an interpretation,
representation, or explanation of racial dynamics and an effort to reorganize or redistribute
resources along particular racial lines” (p. 56). These projects include neoconservative, neoliberal,
far right, and liberal racial projects (see Martin, in press, for an extended discussion of how
mathematics education is itself a kind of racial project). The racial organization that takes place as a
result of these formations and projects operate at many different levels ranging from macro‐level
and structural to everyday experience and gives rise to the various forms of racism that operate in a
society. These forms include slavery, colonialism, xenophobic nationalism, institutional and
structural racism, everyday racism, and, more recently, colorblind racism.
Because it calls attention to both the historical unfolding of racism and to the contemporary
sociopolitical forces and processes that support racism, racial formation theory necessitates asking
how societal practices and institutions, like mathematics education, continue to shape and are
shaped by these processes. For example, what are the implications of the emergence of a far‐right,
conservative racial project for mathematics education in Denmark and for immigrant families and
their children who find themselves under attack by the right‐wing Danish People’s party (Wren,
2001)? How do experiences with everyday racism by Malays and Indians in Singapore—groups
who occupy very different positions in the social hierarchy—play out in the context of mathematics
1 Although I invoke both race and racism in this paper, my primary concern is not with reifying the concept of race but with exploring racism as it actualized and perpetuated in global contexts and with exploring the consequences for mathematics education, including how mathematics education contributes to societal racism. I also acknowledge the interconnectedness of racism with class, gender, other forms of oppression.
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education (Velayutham, 2007)? What are the implications for mathematics education of the
maintenance of white supremacy in Brazil, a country that prides itself on maintaining a racial
democracy even in the face of empirical research and everyday experiences that suggest otherwise?
As noted by Twine (1998):
Despite a body of social science literature documenting racism, this mythology of the
Brazilian racial democracy is still embraced and defended by nonelite Brazilians. Scholars
have argued that the continued faith of nonelites in racial democracy is a primary obstacle
to the development of a sustained and vital antiracist movement in Brazil. For example,
Hasenbalg described this ideology of racial democracy as ‘the most powerful integrative
symbol to demobilize blacks and legitimate the racial inequalities prevailing since the end of
slavery’ (1979) (p. 8)
Based on my own critical analyses of research in the United States context, for example, I claim
that mathematics education, as a knowledge‐producing domain, is simultaneously a producer and
consumer of racial meanings, disparities, hierarchies, and identities (Martin, in press). One on hand,
scholarly interpretations of children’s mathematical behaviors serve to inform societal beliefs
about race, racial categories, abilities, and competence. On the other hand, race‐based societal
beliefs about children from various social groups—drawn from our long history of racism—also
serve to inform the ways that mathematics education research, policy, and practice are
conceptualized and configured in relation to these children (Martin, 2010). In the U.S. context, the
production and consumption of racial meanings in mathematics education is exemplified in both
the constructions of Blackness and whiteness and in the construction of Black and white racial
identities based on societal artifacts like achievement outcomes in mathematics. Black racial
identity, for example, is constructed to align with failure and lack of mathematical ability (Martin,
2009a, 2009b). White racial identity is typically constructed as normative. Moreover, the
construction and reification of a racial hierarchy of mathematical ability has served to organize
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racial identities and mathematical competence from top to bottom in a way that is consistent with
the organization of racial categories in the larger U.S. society (Martin, 2009a).
My own research (Martin, 2008, 2009a, 2009b, 2011, in press) as well as research by colleagues
(e.g., DiME, 2007; Gutierrez, 2010; Leonard, 2008; Powell, 2002; Tate, 1994, 1995; Tate and
Rousseau, 2002) has drawn attention to these issues and has attempted to add needed complexity
to studying the racial contexts of mathematics education in the U.S. This work has shown that the
longer history of U.S. mathematics education research can be characterized by weak
conceptualizations of both race and racism.
I am driven to push for analyses of racism in global and international contexts because of a
seeming lack of attention to these issues by mathematics scholars in both obvious and less‐than‐
obvious locations where racism continues to thrive and to structure societal institutions and
practices, including mathematics education. Beyond what are regarded by many as obvious cases
like South Africa and the U.S., I find the minimization of racism in international mathematics
education research especially problematic, particularly among critical scholars working in contexts
characterized by long histories of colonialism and that can now be increasingly characterized by
xenophobia, anti‐immigration, and contestations of national identity. Perhaps the reluctance to take
up these issues stems from a desire to move “beyond race” and align with colorblind ideologies.
However, I would counter that desire by referring to the insightful analysis offered by Winant
(2004):
Although recent decades have seen a tremendous efflorescence of movements for racial
equality and justice, the legacies of centuries of racial oppression have not been overcome.
Nor is a vision of racial justice fully worked out. Certainly, the idea that such justice has
already been largely achieved—as seen in the ‘color‐blind’ paradigm in the United States,
the ‘nonracialist’ rhetoric of the South African Freedom Charter, the Brazilian rhetoric of
‘racial democracy,’ and the emerging ‘racial differentialism’ of the European Union—
6
remains problematic. Race will never be ‘transcended.’ Nor should it be, for it is both the
product of a long history of oppression and of an equally extensive history of freedom
struggle (p. 165)
Recognizing that mathematics education is a knowledge‐producing enterprise, I argue for
deeper analyses of how this enterprise contributes to and responds to the racial conditions,
meanings, and projects in a given society.
2. Racism and Mathematics Education in the U.S. Context
For nearly fifteen years, my research, based in the United States context, has focused on
studying the salience and meanings of race and racism in the everyday and mathematical
experiences of Blacks learners. To understand these meanings and experiences, it has been
necessary to examine the institutional, structural, political and historical contexts of race and
racism in the larger society including how the meanings for Blackness (and Whiteness) have
emerged and have been negotiated within these contexts. Some of the participants in my studies,
for example, were able to reflect on their experiences of ‘being black’ and their attempts at
becoming doers of mathematics in both the civil rights and post‐civil rights eras of U.S. history.
During that short time frame, as well as more contemporarily, the meanings for race and the
manifestations of racism have continued to evolve for the purpose of maintaining Blackness as a
marker for inferiority. Racism in the U.S., for example, has been rearticulated from explicit Jim Crow
forms to neoconservative colorblindness (Bonilla‐Silva, 2001, 2003). This evolution of racism in the
U.S. context highlights the evolution of racism more generally:
Faced with increasingly assertive demands for democracy and national liberation—
demands that sometimes reached revolutionary levels of mobilization and involved
prolonged armed conflict—the world racial system underwent a transition from
domination to hegemony. Segregation and colonialism—at least in their explicit state‐
enforced forms—were abandoned as the principal instrumentalities of racial rule…. The
7
new world racial system could maintain much of the stratification and inequality, much of
the differential access to political power and voice… without recourse to comprehensive
coercion or racial dictatorship. (Winant, 2001, p. 307)
In my writings about Black learners in the U.S. context, I have argued that the racial and
mathematical identities of these learners are negotiated in relation to these everyday, institutional,
political, and structural contexts and that the historical and contemporary social devaluing of
Blackness in the United States has made ‘being Black’ an especially salient marker for learning and
participation in mathematics. This social devaluation extends to knowledge production within the
domain of mathematics education, which has contributed to the equating of Blackness with
mathematical illiteracy and intellectual inferiority and to the normalization of Whiteness and white
children’s mathematical behaviors (Martin, 2006, 2007, 2009a, 2009b).
My empirical analyses have led to me to argue that, beyond being conceptualized as cognitive,
social, and cultural activities, mathematics learning and participation can be conceptualized as
racialized forms of experience and that this is true for all learners (Martin, 2006, 2009). That is, the
contested meanings for and ideologies of race in the sociohistorical and sociopolitical contexts of
the U.S. are highly salient in structuring mathematical experiences and opportunities and just as
relevant in shaping common‐sense beliefs and official knowledge about who is competent (or not)
in mathematics. My analyses of the dominant deficit‐oriented discourses about Black mathematics
learners vis‐à‐vis other learners as well as my critical analyses of the race‐comparative method
have revealed the historical construction of Black children as learners having minimal
mathematical skills and as being located at the bottom of the racial hierarchy of mathematics ability
(Martin, 2009a, 2009b, in press b). I do not claim that racism is singularly important in
mathematics learning and participation but, as noted by Winant (2001), we cannot ignore the ways
it contextualizes all human activity:
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Race must be grasped as a fundamental condition of individual and collective identity, a
permanent, although tremendously flexible, dimension of the modern global social
structure. The epochal phenomenon of race has been the basis for the most comprehensive
systems of oppression and injustice ever organized, and simultaneously the foundation for
every dream of liberation, at least since the inception of the modern world. (p. 2)
My own theorizing about racism in mathematics education has also drawn on sociological
accounts that which suggest deeper conceptualizations of racism that highlight its ideological bases,
its structural manifestations, and the process by which it is employed. Such an expanded view “does
not invest the concept of racism with any permanent content but instead sees racism as a property
of certain political projects that link the representation and organization of race” (Winant, 2004, p.
46).
Although my own studies have focused on Black learners, considerations of racism in the U.S.
context are not confined to this particular group. It is also true that Native Americans, Asian
Americans, Latinos, and some European immigrant groups have all experienced racism during
various periods of U.S. history. In fact, the social categories that have come to serve as markers of
group identification are themselves products of the larger politics of race and racial formation
processes. That is, they are not natural categories for the identification of human bodies. Some
European immigrants to the United States, including the Irish and Jews, “became white” as they
gradually and willingly assimilated into U.S. society (Brodkin, 1998; Ignatiev, 2008). As noted by
Omi and Winant (1994):
The racial categories used in census enumeration have varied widely from decade to
decade. Groups such as Japanese Americans have moved from categories such as ‘non‐
white,’ ‘Oriental,’ or simply ‘Other’ to recent inclusion as a specific ‘ethnic’ group under the
broader category of ‘Asian and Pacific Islanders.’… How one is categorized is far from a
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merely academic or even personal matter. Such matters as access to employment, housing,
or other publically privately valued goods; social program design and the disbursement of
local, state, and federal funds… are directly affected by racial classification and the
recognition of ‘legitimate groups.’ The determination of racial categories is thus an intensely
political process. (p. 3)
More recently, nationalist sentiments associated with neo‐conservative, neo‐liberal, and far‐
right political projects have re‐racialized Arabs and Muslims in relation to terrorism discourse in
the United States. It can be argued that on September 12, 2001, these groups were socially
blackened in a way that repositioned them at the bottom of the racial hierarchy and constructed
them as a threat to U.S. national identity, safety, and security. Although these sentiments are often
framed in nationalist terms, nationalism and racism are intimately intertwined (Mosse, 1995).
Perhaps most striking is the deliberate linking of mathematics education reform to these larger
nationalist politics and to these racially‐informed constructions of terrorist threat (Martin, in press;
Martin, 2011, Martin, 2010). For example, on April 18, 2006, former Republican President George
Bush issued an executive order authorizing the formation of the National Mathematics Advisory
Panel. The explicit charge to the Panel was to map out the aims, goals, and future directions of
mathematics teaching and learning in the United States. After nearly two years of work, the final
report of the panel (U.S. Department of Education, 2008) opens by invoking nationalist‐oriented
language that ties mathematics education reform directly to preserving U.S. national
competitiveness, safety, and security. Concerns about improving teaching, learning, and curriculum
are consequently couched within these same concerns. A historical analysis shows a similar linking
of mathematics education to the larger politics of race and nationalism during the new math era
response to the Soviet launching of Sputnik in 1957. The call for mathematics education reform that
would enable the best and brightest (which could also be interpreted as the best and the Whitest)
students in the U.S. to help preserve the country from a Soviet threat came at a time when the
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nation was still struggling with equality for Black Americans, whose educational opportunities
remained severely limited due to segregation and structural racism even after the historic Brown v.
Board of Education decision ending school segregation. The mathematics education reforms of the
day, spurred on by democracy‐preserving fears, were paradoxically not conceptualized to include
Black Americans (Martin, in press).
It is not the case that mathematics education is a domain free from racial contestation and racial
politics and that that it is pulled unwittingly into racial dynamics of the larger society. In recent
papers (Martin, in press a, in press b, 2008), I have argued for examining the very structure of the
mathematics education enterprise itself as a racialized context, including its configurations of
power, its demographics, and its dominant ideologies. My analyses of mathematics education
research and policy in the United States have led me to conceptualize these contexts as
instantiations of white institutional space (Martin, 2008, 2009b, in press a; Moore, 2008), no
different than other racialized contexts. An examination of the two‐volume A History of School
Mathematics (Stanic & Kilpatrick, 2003) as well as the Second Handbook of Research on Mathematics
Teaching and Learning (Lester, 2007) shows that the history of mathematics education in the
United States can also be characterized by ‘white‐on‐white’ and ‘white‐on‐minority’ research,
substantiating the characterization of the research domain as an instantiation of white institutional
space where racial knowledge is constructed, but only recently has been contested.
3. From White‐on‐Black to Black‐on‐White: Race and Mathematics Education Research in South Africa
In a book chapter titled, A history of mathematics education research in South Africa: the
apartheid years, South African mathematics educator Herbert Bheki Khuzwayo (2005) raised the
following question: How did apartheid ideology and political practice influence how mathematics was
taught and learned in the past? According to Khuazwayo, his analysis of mathematics education in
South Africa during the period 1948 to 1994 “places the history of mathematics education in a
11
broader context by describing the general developments in South Africa during this period” (p.
308). His methodology for understanding the relationships between mathematics education and
this broader context included archival study of major mathematics education reports and
interviews of key individuals who had experienced mathematics education, as students and
teachers, during this period. He noted:
… a history of mathematics education research in apartheid South Africa may be analysed
chronologically and racially—racial classification was a foundational construct of
apartheid—into the main categories of: ‘research on whites by whites’ of the early
apartheid years; ‘research on blacks by whites’ that followed the Soweto school uprisings in
the late 1970s and early 1980s; and ‘research on blacks by blacks’ in the dying years of
apartheid and the period of transition to the new democracy. The concern about who does
research on whom, inherited from apartheid’s preoccupation with race, thus raises
questions for the new post‐apartheid South Africa and highlights also the difficulties for
new ‘research on whites by blacks’.
In reflecting on the early apartheid years, a period he characterized as being dominated by
‘white‐on‐white’ research, Khuzwayo recounted a September 1953 speech made by the Minister of
Native Affairs, H.F. Verwoerd, on the Second Reading of the Bantu Education Bill. In that speech,
Verwoerd declared:
When I have control over native education I will reform it so that the Natives will be taught
from childhood to realise that equality with Europeans is not for them. People who believe
in equality are not desirable teachers for Natives ... What is the use of teaching the Bantu
child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite absurd. (Verwoerd 1953:
3585)
In a cogent characterization of mathematics education research during this time period,
Khuzwayo (2005) stated:
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During the early apartheid years the concern was with white education. Mathematics
education research relating to whites in South Africa therefore appears to have a long
history…. It is important to note that although research reports would refer to the ‘Republic
of South Africa’, much of this research was not only done by white researchers, with the
research subjects also consisting only of whites, but there was also no direct reference to
race in the research. (p. 311)
Summarizing research produced during the period of the Soweto uprisings, which he
characterized as a period of ‘white‐on‐black’ research, Khuzwayo observed:
A common element in the studies discussed above is that they all invoke race and culture as
determining factors of mathematical capacity. Moreover, they make a particular reading of
black culture as problematic, and do so from a particular white perspective which is taken
as the norm. (p. 319)
Finally, in discussing mathematics education in the contemporary post‐apartheid context,
Khuzwayo raised concerns about the possibilities and prospects of ‘black‐on‐white’ research:
It seems, even in the new dispensation, that it is still difficult for black researchers to
research white schools, or pupils in historically white schools, when requiring in‐depth
sustained scrutiny of their practices. This poses a challenge to researchers: blacks wanting
to research the teaching and learning of mathematics in historically white schools, which
require equally to be understood and improved, need to do so against all the odds.
However, this racial analysis raises broader questions about ‘who does research on
whom’… (p. 322)
Khuzwayo concluded his chapter by reflecting on the concept of occupation, particularly in
contexts where an oppressor not only maintains control of the oppressed by occupying their land
but also by occupying their mind. He opined that:
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As people’s lives (i.e. the lives of both whites and blacks) were ‘occupied’ through the
apartheid education system, so too there was ‘occupation’ of knowledge about mathematics
learning, and ‘occupation’ of the research in mathematics education (which is a different
way of describing the fact that there was ‘white research on black education’ but not the
reverse ‘black on white’ research)…. The study I conducted and some examples of research I
have provided have taught me that the dominant feature of mathematics teaching in South
Africa in the period 1948–1994 was the ‘occupation of our minds’. The main challenge of
mathematics education researchers in South Africa is to continue to look for ways in which
we can end this ‘occupation’, by means of which research was racialised and perceived in
the past…. Ending ‘occupation’ in earnest, will ensure that black researchers are equally
represented with white researchers in mathematics education research…. Lastly, ending
‘occupation’ must ensure that more black researchers are also involved in doing research so
that those problems that still beset both black and white pupils in learning mathematics are
dealt with in earnest. (pp. 323‐324)
In many ways, the “obvious” example of South Africa makes it very difficult to dispute the
argument that race, racism, and the larger racial context in a given society are important
considerations for understanding how mathematics education is configured in that same society.
The apartheid and post‐apartheid systems in South Africa have received international attention for
more than 60 years. Both researchers and laypersons would have little hesitation in accepting the
argument that there is a broader racial context to mathematics education research, policy, and
practice in South Africa when it is well known that apartheid structured every aspect of South
African life. They might acknowledge that even in contemporary times, mathematics education is
impacted by the vestiges of apartheid and the changes brought about in post‐apartheid South
Africa.
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In my view, the analysis offered by Khuzwayo (2005) is helpful not only in understanding how
South African mathematics education has historically been situated within and impacted by the
larger racial conditions but also for understanding how mathematics education helped to maintain
the racial conditions in the broader South African society. Just as important, the analysis by
Khuzwayo is helpful in understanding how apartheid in the larger South African context is
reproduced within the domain of mathematics education research, particularly in relation to “who
does research on whom” (p. 321). His analysis helps to reveal, more broadly than my claims about
the U.S. context, that mathematics education is both a consumer and producer of racial meanings,
practices, and conditions. His call to end the occupation of mathematics education is an explicit call
for mathematics education as a community of practice to respond to the larger racial politics in a
way that does not make the domain complicit in maintaining racial oppression.
While the South African racial context may be obvious because of the attention it has received
in the popular media and international politics and because it aligns with the paradigmatic black‐
white construction of racial difference and racial strife, it is also true that racism and racial identity
in this context is marked by even more complexity. The construction of racial difference in South
Africa has resulted in many racial categories—Black, White, Indian, and Colored—and the meanings
for those multiple categories have not emerged without great sociopolitical significance and
consequences. These categories, like all racial categories, emerge and remain useful for the purpose
of maintaining power relations (Winant, 2001).
More generally, sociologists tell us that the meanings for race and racial categories, the
instantiations of racism, and the racial dynamics in a given sociohistorical and geopolitical context
all undergo constant rearticulation (Cornell & Hartman, 1998; Omi & Winant, 1994; Winant, 2001,
2004). As these meanings, instantiations, and dynamics evolve, the consequences for mathematics
education research, policy, and practice also need to be well understood. Although it is but one
context, I agree with Winant and Seidman (2001), who suggested:
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The South African experience illuminates important questions of political and cultural
practice that can have great meaning elsewhere. And yes, the transition to democracy in
South Africa, the end of white supremacy there, also sheds light on scholarly questions as
well, notably questions about the meaning of race in the modern world. (p. 213)
4. Beyond Black‐White: Global Considerations of Race and Racism
Race has been fundamental in global politics and culture for half a millennium. It continues to signify and structure social life not only experientially and locally, but nationally and globally. Race is present everywhere: it is evident in the distribution of resources and power, and in the desires and fears of individuals from Alberta to Zimbabwe. Race has shaped the modern economy and nation‐state. It has permeated all available social identities, cultural forms, and systems of signification. (Winant, 2001, p. 1) Beyond the borders of the United States and South Africa, sociologists (e.g., Omi & Winant,
1994; Winant, 2001, 2004; Wren, 2001) have highlighted the ubiquity of racism and have pointed
out that as the meanings for race have changed to serve the interests of those who dominate a given
sociopolitical and geopolitical context, so have the forms of racism that have been employed to
create lines of social demarcation and difference and to maintain power and control.
One form of racism that has taken hold in many European countries is cultural racism (Wren,
2001). Understanding cultural racism as a variation that is both similar to and different from the
forms of racism that are often associated with the Black‐White paradigm is important. This
understanding has the potential to expose the ubiquity of racism that was claimed above while not
suggesting that the South African or U.S. contexts define racial dynamics elsewhere. In the contexts
of modern European societies, where mass migration is being met with the resistance of
nationalism, Wren’s (2001) characterization of cultural racism is informative:
Cultural racism as a discourse performs the same task as biological racism, as culture
functions in the same way as nature, creating closed and bounded cultural groups. However,
while biological racism legitimated the use of migrant labourers for menial work within
core countries or their colonies, based on their genetic inferiority, cultural racism
16
conveniently legitimates the exclusion of ‘others’ on the basis that they are culturally
different, and that their presence in core countries will inevitably lead to conflict. This
externalization and ‘othering’ process is part of this new racist discourse, which serves the
dominant structures of power by justifying exclusion and glossing over issues of social and
economic inequality by cloaking discussion of these issues in ‘cultural difference’ (Molina
and Tesfahuney 1995). (p. 144)
A reasonable question to ask is, beyond the obvious racial situations and conditions of the
U.S. and South African contexts described earlier, what are the racial situations and conditions
in those locations that are both similar to and different than these contexts and how are those
racial conditions relevant to mathematics education? Shared histories of Black enslavement and
continued Black oppression account for similarities (i.e. Brazil). In other locations, the literal
presence of Blacks is replaced by blackness as a metaphor for groups who are unwelcome or
perceived as a threat to national identity.
Something Rotten in Denmark
In recent years, Denmark has proven to be a center of critical mathematics education. It is
also location that has also experienced mass migration and increased multiculturalism from the
presence of Turks, Iraqis, Lebanese, Bosnians, Pakistanis, Somalis, Vietnamese, and a number of
other groups. The country has struggled with this new multicultural reality:
Denmark has been known for years as a model society. Unfortunately, since the arrival of
ethnic minorities, Danish society has dramatically changed from being tolerant to one of the
most xenophobic in Europe. Racism and discrimination—socioeconomic, cultural and
religious—is widespread. Over 50% of ethnic minorities are unemployed, often are given
housing in deprived areas, mother tongue education has been abolished, young people are
not allowed to visit entertainment places, police attitudes are unfriendly, and elderly
17
minorities have no suitable facilities in homes for the elderly. Most political parties support
many restrictive laws. Family reunion, asylum and visa regulations are being tightened
regularly. Conditions for establishing a family, obtaining permanent residence and getting
citizenship are so strict that very few people can fulfill them. Media coverage is very
negative and often perpetuates existing prejudices. Isalmophobia is prevalent in all sections
of the society. (European Network Against Racism, 2006, p. 4)
Denmark, a country traditionally regarded as liberal and tolerant, experienced a
fundamental shift in attitude during the early 1980s that has seen it emerge potentially as
one of the most racist countries in Europe. Paradoxically, liberal values are used as
justification for negative representations of ‘others’. (Wren, 2001)
The realities or racism and xenophobia in the Denmark are echoed throughout the rest of the
European Union. In 2006, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC)
issued a report, Migrants’ Experiences of Racism and Xenophobia in 12 EU Member States,
documenting the experiences of more than 11,000 migrants in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Spain,
France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, Portugal and the United Kingdom. As
noted in the Foreword and detailed in more than 125 pages:
The present pilot study shows that a significant number of migrants in all twelve countries
have subjectively experienced discriminatory practices in their everyday life. Migrants seem
to be particularly vulnerable in the sphere of employment and in the context of commercial
transactions, where nearly on third of respondents had subjectively faced discrimination.
The same proportion of migrants reported to have encountered discriminatory practices by
the police or in education. (p. 3, emphasis added)
The Myth of Racial Democracy in Brazil
As noted above, Brazil shares with the United States a history of Black enslavement and
continued Black oppression. Yet, the history of racism in Brazil and its continuing significance
18
remains contested (Telles, 2004). While some mathematics scholars in this context have written
about class‐based oppression relative to the conditions in the Brazilian favelas (e.g., Skovsmose,
Scandiuzzi, Valero, & Alrø, 2008), many of these studies have not incorporated deep analysis of the
larger racial context or of how the meanings for Blackness and the racial categories in the Brazilian
Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) system are negotiated and structure the experiences of
learners. The lack of deeper analysis of the racial context in Brazil and its relationship to
mathematics education may be partly explained by the following analysis:
Brazilian racial dynamics have traditionally received little attention, either from scholars or
policy makers, despite the fact that the country has the second largest black population in
the world (after Nigeria). Its postemancipation adoption of a policy of ‘whitening,’ which
was to be achieved by concerted recruitment of European immigrants, owed much to the
U.S. example…. Amazingly, the ‘myth of racial democracy’ still flourishes in Brazil, even
though it has been amply demonstrated to be more than a fig leaf covering widespread
racial inequality, injustice, and prejudice (Hasenbalg and Silva, 1992; Hanchard, 1994;
Andrews, 1991). The Brazilian racial system, with its ‘color continuum’ (as opposed to the
more familiar ‘color‐line’ of North America), tends to dilute democratic demands. Indeed,
Brazilian racial dynamics have made it difficult to promote policies that might address
inequality. Public discourse resolutely discourages any attempt to define inequality along
racial lines… (Winant, 2004, pp. 102‐103)
Everyday Racism in Singapore
As pointed out by Winant, the global nature of racial formation implies that no context is
“beyond” race or unaffected by the modern world racial system:
Even in Asia, in regions long thought to be largely free of racial conflict (in both South Asia
and East Asia, for example), the situation looks quite differently today as divisions on the
Indian subcontinent undergo racial articulation (Baber, 1999) and as Yamato and Han
19
supremacy in Japan and China come under review from more racially tuned‐in analysts
(Dikötter, 1997). (Winant, 2001, p. 9)
In his analysis of everyday racism as it is experienced by Singaporean Indians across public
spaces ranging from busses to markets to public swimming pools, sociologist Selvaraj Velayutham
(2007) notes how racism—often perpetuated by Singaporean Chinese—is never the less, largely
absent in societal discourse:
Singapore considers itself a racially tolerant and harmonious country and indeed, the four
official groups—Chinese (77%), Malays (14%), Indians (8%) and Others—have co‐ existed
peacefully since its independence in 1965. However, this does not mean that racial
discrimination and intolerance are non‐existent. Whilst there are many examples of
peaceful cross‐cultural intermingling between the races, everyday social tensions and
discomforts arising from living with cultural difference are rarely officially acknowledged
(see for instance Lai 1995). Indeed, the term racism is entirely absent from official
discourse and public debate in Singapore…. I argue that while the city‐state actively engages
in activities targeted at 'fostering social cohesion' and is ever vigilant at suppressing overt
racist provocations, with few exceptions it has effectively silenced the voices of people who
are at the receiving end of everyday racism…. [Yet] It is fairly obvious that a general pattern
of racially motivated discrimination emerges in everyday encounters and contacts between
Chinese and Indians. (pp. 1‐5)
The characterizations of the countries and regions presented above are by no means complete.
A more thorough historical presentation of the racial conditions in each of these contexts would
show that these conditions have evolved and continue to be negotiated by those who have
inhabited these contexts for long periods of time and by those who enter these contexts anew. What
deserves more attention and analysis is how the racial conditions in these, and other, contexts
20
affect mathematics education research, policy, and practice. How does mathematics education in
various global contexts both consume and produce these racial conditions?
It seems reasonable to ask, What are the implications for increased racism and xenophobia for
Turks and Somalis in Denmark? Where does and should the analysis of racism emerge in critical
mathematics education scholarship produced in Denmark? How do emerging racial dynamics
throughout the European Union emerge to disempower some groups and empower others in the
context of mathematics education? How can the myth of racial democracy in Brazil be
deconstructed by mathematics educators as a way to shed light on the mathematical experiences of
those who have been socially blackened? How might critical mathematics educators re‐interpret,
re‐evaluate, and raise questions about “Asian superiority” in mathematics education when issues of
racism are infused into the conversation as a way to understand this social construction of
competence and ability? Many such questions remain.
5. Conclusion
The call for more extensive studies of the racial context of mathematics education in
international contexts should not be interpreted as one of scholarly arrogance, dictating what other
scholars should or should not study. However, the ubiquity of racism implies that mathematics
education is susceptible to their influences. The obvious cases of South Africa and the United States
show how the racial conditions of each society emerge to shape mathematics education. Similarly,
mathematics education in each of these contexts contributes to the larger racial conditions. Where
issues of nationalism, xenophobia, and cultural racism have emerged to mark some as the “other,”
further studies of these racial conditions are needed, especially among critical mathematics
educators as they situate mathematics education in its broader sociopolitical contexts.
21
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