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What It's Like to Be a Black Mathematician

nytimes.com

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Re: What It's Like to Be a Black Mathematician

#41

Post by eruci »

skh wrote: post #21
eruci wrote: post #5

"Fewer than 1 percent of doctorates in math are awarded to African-Americans" So? We have affirmative action policies for university admissions. If an Asian needs an "X" SAT score, and an African-American "X - δ" to enter university, yet, fewer of them make it to the higher levels, what do we do? Have different standards for awarding doctorates based on race? Western civilization is in crisis because of these social…

Western civilization is in crisis because of these social experimental policies undermining its original meritocratic competitive default mode. So, the real question is, where/when at some point does this madness stop? We have a significant segment of the population that has been historically oppressed and suppressed. After desegregation whites fled the cities. Go look at the population of the top 50 cities in the U.…

I can't. This is not a solution.

Re: What It's Like to Be a Black Mathematician

#42

Post by coldtea »

kauffj wrote: post #34

> For the record, here is a small sample of other communities where black people are strongly underrepresented: > Runners (3%). Bikers (6%). Furries (2%). Wall Street senior management (2%). Occupy Wall Street protesters (unknown but low, one source says 1.6% but likely an underestimate). BDSM (unknown but low) Tea Party members (1%). American Buddhists (~2%). Bird watchers (4%). Environmentalists (various but univer…

Most of these should be a sign of pride for black people that most of them aren't...

Runners, furries, Wall Street senior management, American Buddhists, Bird watchers, Environmentalists, Wikipedia contributors, Atheists, Vegetarian activists (maybe 1-5%). Yoga enthusiasts, fanfiction readers, unitarian Universalists, and so on....

Obnoxious appropriations of foreign cultures, middle class pastimes, infantilization, and virtue-signaling, the lot of them...

(Imagine what Bill Hicks would have thought about each of those activities, and imagine how impressed they'd be by a class of people uninterested in such BS)

Re: What It's Like to Be a Black Mathematician

#43

Post by iguy »

_bxg1 wrote: post #27
eruci wrote: post #5

"Fewer than 1 percent of doctorates in math are awarded to African-Americans" So? We have affirmative action policies for university admissions. If an Asian needs an "X" SAT score, and an African-American "X - δ" to enter university, yet, fewer of them make it to the higher levels, what do we do? Have different standards for awarding doctorates based on race? Western civilization is in crisis because of these social…

There's something to be said for representation. If you're a bright high-schooler with some interest in mathematics, but don't have a single mathematician to point to who shares your cultural background, it's much harder to visualize and manifest your goal. There's at least a partial self-sustaining mechanism to this sort of thing, which I think is the best argument for affirmative action.

But "shares your cultural background" is in large measure something we choose. Not necessarily as individuals, but as a society, in what we emphasise.

Why can't "American" be the right cultural background, or better yet for math nerd kids, "mathematicians who are also musicians" (common), or "mathematicians who like drawing pictures" / "hate drawing pictures" (most depts have both)?

Instead we choose always to emphasise fault lines, and they are proliferating. How many years until it's important to hire enough openly gay (or muslim, or trans, or atheist!) mathematicians, for exactly the same reasoning? The kids likely to become mathematicians may be the people on the planet least interested in these divisions, but they are really really interested in symbols on paper.

Re: What It's Like to Be a Black Mathematician

#44

Post by lotaezenwa »

This mathematician is not stupid. I would be inclined to believe he understands statistics/anecdotes/academia better than you reading this right now.

We only get a small glimpse into the intricacies of his world view and life, and this is what he has chosen to share. This is the story he is telling.

Ask yourself why someone in this position would tell this story based on years of lived experience. Do you believe him? Or do you believe keyboard warriors in some of the comments under this article diminishing his perspective with "but what about"-ism and the like?

I am black and studied math in school. The 'leaky pipeline' exists to some extent. Racist people exist even if you, reading this, are not racist.

Re: What It's Like to Be a Black Mathematician

#45

Post by umvi »

mLuby wrote: post #17
eruci wrote: post #5

"Fewer than 1 percent of doctorates in math are awarded to African-Americans" So? We have affirmative action policies for university admissions. If an Asian needs an "X" SAT score, and an African-American "X - δ" to enter university, yet, fewer of them make it to the higher levels, what do we do? Have different standards for awarding doctorates based on race? Western civilization is in crisis because of these social…

I mean, doesn't the madness stop once the identity breakdown in a given field roughly matches the identity in the general population? If X% of people are Black, I would expect given no structural impediments that roughly X% of Mathematicians would also be Black. The how to get there in the quickest and fairest way is a political question.

> If X% of people are Black, I would expect given no structural impediments that roughly X% of Mathematicians would also be Black.

So if Y% of people are White, would you expect given no structural impediments that roughly Y% of rappers/NBA players would also be White?

Re: What It's Like to Be a Black Mathematician

#46

Post by DanBC »

crowdpleaser wrote: post #16
burkaman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what do we do? Good question. It's a very hard problem, and requires a lot of thought and self-reflection to even begin to solve. Simple university admission policies will not solve such a broad social issue, as you've noted. > original meritocratic competitive default mode Can you explain this? When/where did this meritocratic system exist?

Meritocracy was the default for institutions so long as someone could enter the competition. The aberrations were for nepotism/ cronyism but those appear to be relatively limited. I can recommend some books about how the German university system worked or how the British civil service worked or how the Dutch trade houses worked if you’re interested. Today isn’t a perfect meritocracy, the last wasn’t either, but moder…

> how the British civil service worked

Literally an old boys network where people had to go to the right schools. The civil service is currently working hard to correct years of racist (and sexist, and ableist) hiring practices.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/black-and-asi...

"The study, commissioned by the Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood and the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, found that ethnic minority staff got lower marks in performance reviews, do not always have equal access to promotion, and don’t feel they work for an organisation that is “open, fair and inclusive”. Even black and Asian officials who make it to the senior ranks felt it was largely because “their face did fit” the mould in other ways – like attending Oxbridge or having middle-class parents."

Re: What It's Like to Be a Black Mathematician

#47

Post by pvg »

avip wrote: post #24
skh wrote: post #6

EDIT: Got rid of part of my post that had enough information in it that could be tied to people in real life. -------- It doesn't help that West Lafayette is a very racist place in my experience. I'm white and a native speaker of American English. On my first day of teaching at Purdue I introduced myself to the class and a student asked, "Are you an American? Do you speak English?" At the time West Lafayette had a co…

It is also not helping that there actually is such a thing as "token X". A less discussed side effect of affirmative action.

I don't think that's the thing that's 'not helping', here.

Re: What It's Like to Be a Black Mathematician

#48

Post by ericdykstra »

mLuby wrote: post #17
eruci wrote: post #5

"Fewer than 1 percent of doctorates in math are awarded to African-Americans" So? We have affirmative action policies for university admissions. If an Asian needs an "X" SAT score, and an African-American "X - δ" to enter university, yet, fewer of them make it to the higher levels, what do we do? Have different standards for awarding doctorates based on race? Western civilization is in crisis because of these social…

I mean, doesn't the madness stop once the identity breakdown in a given field roughly matches the identity in the general population? If X% of people are Black, I would expect given no structural impediments that roughly X% of Mathematicians would also be Black. The how to get there in the quickest and fairest way is a political question.

This is baseless, unscientific blank-slateism, and isn't true anywhere in the world among any demographic segment in any measure.

If 10% of Singaporean men are gay would you expect 10% of male plumbers in Singapore to be gay? If women are 30% of the workforce in Canada, would you expect Canadian dental assistants to be 70% male?

Disparate outcomes doesn't imply unfair treatment.

Re: What It's Like to Be a Black Mathematician

#49

Post by noobermin »

tyler- wrote: post #23

People from poor demographics in general are discriminated against in various ways. Want to learn math but come from a poor neighborhood? Good luck. You’re probably locked in a school system with bad teachers and few if any math courses beyond calculus. Even if you’re talented you probably know 0 people that can help you. Now your growth is prematurely stunted. That kid from a better off family that shows talent in m…

This I guess is exactly what I was thinking. As a legacy from segregation (and ultimately, slavery), African Americans still are disproportionately poor. This explains the macro-statistic, that only 1% of Math PhD's are given to African Americans.

I don't doubt there is some personal bias that is at play too. As a PhD who isn't Black but isn't white or Asian, I face it too, but the personal challenges I face paled in comparison to the structural and purely economic challenges I had to overcome.

Re: What It's Like to Be a Black Mathematician

#50

Post by tptacek »

eruci wrote: post #33
mLuby wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, doesn't the madness stop once the identity breakdown in a given field roughly matches the identity in the general population? If X% of people are Black, I would expect given no structural impediments that roughly X% of Mathematicians would also be Black. The how to get there in the quickest and fairest way is a political question.

That's a rather simplistic political view. Divide all professional achievement equally among races, although individual scientific recognitions (as in this case) are not up to the state to divvy up, but, up to the individual person to earn via hard work and innate talent. Even in the case mentioned in the article, it seems like a doctorate was awarded mostly on political grounds and not so much on the quality of rese…

The guidelines ask you to write more carefully as topics get divisive, but you're doing the opposite: talking about the "madness" of affirmative action is emotional language that does nothing but polarize the thread. Plenty of HN people respectfully and carefully disagree with affirmative action; if you can't be one of them, step aside and let them do it instead.
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