Furthermore, the whole notion of math being racist ignores the very history of the subject. Although the Greeks gave us Euclidean geometry and some trigonometry, it was quite literally advances made by medieval Muslims that took Europe out of the dark ages, gifting the West with the numerical system and algebra required for the creation of calculus by Newton and Leibniz. Even today, Terry Tao, an Australian American of Chinese descent, is widely considered one of, if not the singular best mathematician alive.

As for my own experience, I tutored probably a dozen Latino students in inner-city South Central LA and Santa Ana and saw just how underserved they were by their teachers as well as just how quickly they adapted and excelled when I got to work with them directly. As an admittedly mediocre math major, I can personally vouch for the fact that I was often the only white woman in my very international classrooms and that my best math friend and one of the most brilliant peers I worked with (nay, relied on to pass exams) is a black woman.

The only thing racist here is keeping black and brown students stuck in a failing public school system. The problem isn’t the students. It’s the system.