Jan 20, 2023
Back in school, math was my least favorite and most troublesome subject. But it seems like I ought to take another look: I've just learned that math is "white" and "cisheteropatriarchal," just like me! That's the conclusion of Vanderbilt U. education professor Luis Antonio Leyva (he/him/él). According to the invaluable College Fix, Leyva delivered a lecture at a big-time mathematics meeting in Boston in January. The lecture, according a tweet from Leyva, "was based on my research interrogating undergraduate math education as a white, cisheteropatriarchal space." The College Fix helpfully explains that "cisheteropatriarchal" refers to "a system of male, straight, conforming-to-assigned sex system power." Well, duh. According to the lecture's abstract, his "findings depict[ed] how Black, Latin*, and Asian QT [queer and transgender] students' narratives of experience reflect forms of intersectionality, or instan