Negotiating the “White Male Math Myth”: African American Male Students and Success in School Mathematics

Abstract

This article shows how equity research in mathematics education can be decentered by reporting the “voices” of mathematically successful African American male students as they recount their experiences with school mathematics, illustrating, in essence, how they negotiated the White male math myth. Using post-structural theory, the concepts discourse, person/identity, and power/agency are reinscribed or redefined. The article also shows that using a post-structural reinscription of these concepts, a more complex analysis of the multiplicitous and fragmented robust mathematics identities of African American male students is possible—an analysis that refutes simple explanations of effort. The article concludes, not with “answers,” but with questions to facilitate dialogue among those who are interested in the mathematics achievement and persistence of African American male students—and equity and justice in the mathematics classroom for all students.

Mathematics identity and achievement among Black students

“…Black brilliance has been largely ignored by educators, educational researchers, and policy makers but is being taken up in more recent work. Additionally, such work increasingly includes voices of Black students (Berry, 2008;Jett, 2010;McGee, 2013b;Stinson, 2013). By doing so, the mathematical identities of Black students are increasingly characterized by the students themselves, adding positive characterizations of their identities as they relate to the teaching and learning of mathematics (Grant et al, 2015).…”

Centering Children in Mathematics Education Classroom Research

“…A growing body of scholarship has characterized a number of features of the experiences of Black children and youth in mathematics classrooms, although much of this scholarship has focused on children older than the participants in the current study (e.g., McGee & Martin, 2011; Nasir & Shah, 2011). For example, in interviews with parents, Martin (2009) documented African American parents’ perceptions of ways their children were overlooked in schools as mathematics learners, while Stinson (2013) reported that the African American boys in his study had to negotiate damaging stereotypes and media images in defining themselves as successful mathematics learners. Although they look beyond mathematics, Wright and Counsell (2018) describe ways in which even very young Black boys must navigate anti-Blackness in schools through unfounded assumptions about their dangerousness, lack of representations of children like themselves in literature, and lack of faith by educators in their capabilities.…”

Robust and Fragile Mathematical Identities: A Framework for Exploring Racialized Experiences and High Achievement Among Black College Students

“…A. Spencer, 2009). The number is even smaller for exploring mathematical identity in African American college students, who can reflect on their mathematics learning and participation within different academic time periods and across crucial stages of their development (Ellington & Frederick, 2010;Jett, 2011;Noble, 2011;Stinson, 2013).…”

“…His work has taken into account the historical legacy of racism and the continuing segregation and discrimination of African Americans and how these experiences contribute to a collective identity of what it means to be Black. Martin (e.g., Martin, 2006;Martin & McGee, 2009) and others (e.g., Gutiérrez, 2008;McGee, 2009;Stinson, 2013) have advanced the assertion that mathematics learning and participation can be conceptualized as racialized forms of experience. This perspective suggests that the meanings for race are very salient in structuring mathematical experiences and opportunities and just as relevant in shaping common-sense beliefs and official knowledge about who is competent (or not) in mathematics.…”

“…Although the overall percentage of African Americans earning mathematicsrelated degrees has decreased over the past 15 years (Chen, 2009), a significant number of African Americans continue to excel in these fields at every stage of the academic pipeline (Berry, 2008;Berry, Ellis, & Hughes, 2014;Martin, 2000;Mutegi, 2013;Stinson, 2013;Thompson & Lewis, 2005;Walker, 2011). However, the question remains: Who tells the stories of successful Black students-those who score at or above proficiency levels, maintain high GPAs in mathematicsintensive fields, and obtain the traditionally accepted metrics of academic success-and explains why those stories matter?…”