“Can you count, suckers?”
Does anyone remember the beginning of the classic 1979 movie The Warriors, where an African-American gang leader named Cyrus addresses the combined members of New York City’s gangs, talking about the number of undisciplined youths in the city versus the total number of police officers? (He brilliantly concluded that the ratio of gang members to police was approximately five to one.)
Well, one person who may not remember this epic scene is University of Illinois math professor Rochelle Gutierrez, who recently declared in a new book she wrote that math is inherently racist.
As The Tipping Point’s Liz Wheeler points out in this mildly absurd clip, Gutierrez’s stance is a little bit of a head-scratcher, based on where our system of written numerals originated and where certain mathematical disciplines such as algebra hail from. Certainly, Cyrus from The Warriors might be a little upset if he knew he was using a “whites-only” concept to teach his fellow Big Apple ruffians a lesson.
Although Gutierrez’s specialty is math, one has to wonder how much the professor knows about the origins of the subject she teaches. Indeed, it’s quite probable that many non-white cultures around the world use all kinds of math to balance their budgets, make payments, calculate formulas and sell goods. And of course, within the United States, there are probably more than a few members of minority groups — both in the city of New York and outside it — that need to do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division every now and again.
It’s thinking like this that has us wondering what the criteria for being a tenured university professor is these days. Watch, as Wheeler has a good time with this one!
