The 1619 Project Education Network, in conjunction with the Pulitzer Center, have released a new curriculum for high school students that will convert some math classes into a discussion of reparations and racial justice. Students will be asked to work out the math on the payment for past years of slavery and racial discrimination. A 2020 report found that prior 1619 Project curriculum proposals have been adopted in over 3,500 classrooms across all 50 states.The program, “Reparations Math and Reparations History,” is designed to have “students apply math skills, research into historical wealth gaps in the U.S., and an analysis of different reparations models to an investigation into whether or not reparations should be paid to the descendents of enslaved people in the U.S. …

This is not the first effort to redesign math curriculum with antiracist themes. Academics at schools like Vanderbilt have denounced math as “racist.” We previously discussed the view of University of Rhode Island professor (and Director of Graduate Studies of History) Erik Loomis that “Science, statistics, and technology are all inherently racist.” Others have agreed with that view, including denouncing math as racist or a “tool of whiteness.” There are also calls for the “decolonization” of math as a field.

[They’re calling for the end of science, math, and technology, period. But what they really want is *control* of these fields in order to advance their own narratives. We saw that at work in the COVID-19 pandemic and the demands to “follow the science” that had no real scientific underpinning. They’re arguing, in other words, for a theocracy with the radicals installed as the High Priests of Decolonized Science, with the power to punish heretics. — Ed]