Meritocracy, Color Blindness, and an Assumed-to-Be-Postracial Era: Challenges to Learning Mathematics in the Age of Neoliberalism

Abstract

Through a socio-cultural-critical-race lens, this paper centers, privileges and explores the emerging and negotiated identities of girls of color, in an upper level high school mathematics classroom with a race-conscious and equity driven white woman teacher. Students' discourses regarding mathematics teaching and learning often supported, but at times proved to be resisting, prevailing race-neutral and meritocratic ideologies. This paper works to highlight the importance of attending to the impact of neoliberalism on mathematics teaching and learning in relation to race and racialization. Implications include that teachers, must take into consideration not only that their students are subject to, but also that their classrooms are not immune to, processes of racialization and the larger neoliberal context in which they are situated.