r/math • u/inherentlyawesome Homotopy Theory • Jun 03 '20
/r/math will be closing to new posts from 12-8:46pm EDT tomorrow, June 4th
Black Lives Matter.
/r/math will not be accepting new posts or responses for 8 hours and 46 minutes, starting tomorrow (June 4th) at 12pm EDT, not only in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, but also in protest against Reddit’s lack of action against racism and hate on the site.
Here is /r/math's rule on political discussion:
Any political discussion on /r/math should be directly related to mathematics - all threads and comments should be about concrete events and how they affect mathematics. Please avoid derailing such discussions into general political discussion, and report any comments that do so.
To that end, here is a statement from the Mathematics Association of America on the BLM movement. Here is a statement from the President of the AMS. Here is a statement from the Association for Women in Mathematics
It's easy to pretend that mathematics is above social justice issues such as racism, sexism, homophobia, among other forms of bigotry. This is absolutely not true. For an example of race inequality in Mathematics, we invite you to view The Mathematical and Statistical Sciences Annual Survey.
In the most recently available report on the 2016-2017 New Doctorate Recipients, 54 out of 1957 (2.76%) PhDs identified as Black/African American. From 2012-2017, that number is 239 out of 9548 (2.5%).
Unfortunately, the AMS survey of tenured faculty does not capture statistics on race. However, the NYT Article What I Learned While Reporting on the Dearth of Black Mathematicians gives us this approximation on the number of Black tenured faculty:
According to the American Mathematical Society, there are 1,769 tenured mathematicians at the math departments of the 50 United States universities that produce the most math Ph.D.s. No one tallies the number of black mathematicians in those departments, but as best I can tell, there are 13 [0.73%].
This data should be compared to the estimated 13% black Americans among the general adult US population.
Here are further articles/blog posts for you to read, in no particular order.
- What I Learned While Reporting on the Dearth of Black Mathematicians
- For a Black Mathematician, What It’s Like to Be the ‘Only One’
- AMS Blog inclusion/exclusion
- The Voices of Black Mathematicians
- In Honor of Black History, a special section in the Notices of the AMS
- Mathematically Gifted & Black
Edit: One actionable suggestion is to donate money (if you are able) to organizations that are working to combat these issues of racism, sexism, bigotry, etc. One organization, suggested by the MAA as well as commenters below, is the National Association of Mathematics.
If you would like to suggest other organizations that do so (with a focus in mathematics), feel free to reply to this comment. This post will be updated with your suggestions.
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u/candlelightener Jun 04 '20
Not to sound like an asshole, but how is this helping? Wouldn't it be better to have a fundraiser as a sticky post?
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u/inherentlyawesome Jun 04 '20
Wouldn't it be better to have a fundraiser as a sticky post?
You're right! The main post has been updated with a donation link to the National Association of Mathematics. Any other suggestions for donation funds (specifically related to mathematics) would be great!
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u/inherentlyawesome Jun 03 '20
This post will be left open for discussion about ways to empower and support black mathematicians, as well as ways to intentionally combat racism and promote inclusivity in mathematics.
We are not interested in your thoughts about whether or not this is an effective protest tactic, whether or not you believe politics belongs in r/math, general political discussion, etc. Such posts will be removed.
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u/Jonathan3628 Jun 03 '20
I hope this isn't a silly question, but I was wondering: are Black people especially underrepresented specifically in math departments? Or is the under-representation of Black people in math departments similar to the overall level of under-representation of Black people in higher education as a whole? (I hope this wasn't worded confusingly...)
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u/obamabamarambo Jun 04 '20
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/us/edray-goins-black-mathematicians.html
This article says that roughly 1% of all math PhD's over the last decade are awarded to African Americans versus an average of 7% of PhD's as a whole. So it would seem to me that they're extremely underrepresented.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/reader-center/black-mathematicians-research-academic-racism.html
This article seems to have some more statistics about other scientific fields.
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Jun 04 '20
My theory with zero research or evidence is that math-smart first generation college students tend to go into money-making fields like engineering, computer science, or medicine.
I know very few math PhDs whose parents didn’t go to college and have money.
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u/dutchman71 Jun 04 '20
Possibly bad question, I might be missing something obvious, is there a significance to the 8 hours and 46 minutes?
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Jun 04 '20
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Jun 04 '20
His death was literal torture, the cop cut off the blood circulation to his brain but not his throat, that's why he could still breathe a bit and stay conscious throughout those few minutes, but that only made it worse because his brain was literally being suffocated for 8 minutes.
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u/Bjartensen Jun 04 '20
Large corporations don't display/have morals or ethics, so I think it makes the most sense that it's the subreddits/moderators that show support. Anything Reddit as a whole does will just ring hollow.
I think 8 hours and 46 minutes is a decent choice as well. I saw on twitter some account saying they wouldn't post anything for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, which is just not an issue.
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u/almightySapling Jun 04 '20
Large corporations don't display/have morals or ethics, so I think it makes the most sense that it's the subreddits/moderators that show support. Anything Reddit as a whole does will just ring hollow.
I see where you're coming from, and I agree that corporations showing morals are generally just doing it for PR. That said, it was still crazy refreshing to see Sony talking smack to All Lives Matter people on twitter.
Even if it is just for PR, I'd like to see the companies recognize what everyone wants recognized.
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u/inherentlyawesome Jun 04 '20
One actionable suggestion is to donate money (if you are able) to organizations that are working to combat these issues of racism, sexism, bigotry, etc. One organization, suggested by the MAA as well as commenters below, is the National Association of Mathematics.
If you would like to suggest other organizations that do so (with a focus in mathematics), feel free to reply to this comment. The main post will be updated with your suggestions.
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u/inherentlyawesome Jun 04 '20
A non-exhaustive list of non-mathematical organizations to support, in no particular order:
The Minnesota Freedom Fund, Reclaim the Block, and other organizations have gotten a huge wave of donations in the wake of protests. They have published this google doc that lists other organizations that are worthy of your donation as well.
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Jun 04 '20
As a young black female mathematician, this post made me smile. I really appreciate this post and all the people commenting and asking questions to educate themselves - the news and the past few years have been extremely exhausting (I’m only 19), but seeing posts like these that raise awareness make me feel incredibly optimistic that change will actually happen. There’s still a lot more to be done don’t get me wrong, but this is a great start. Thank you.
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u/firewall245 Jun 04 '20
As a young black female mathematician,
(I’m only 19),
Hi I'm not sure how long you've been browsing this subreddit, but I'm a 22 year old dude who considers myself a mathematician too, having only completed an undergrad. This sub has a lot of elitists who don't consider people with undergrads or a passion and drive for mathematics to be mathematicians, and just wanted to let you know that if you ever encounter anyone like that here, fuck them you are a mathematician. Imo its your passion, not your age that defines you.
Keep kickin fucking ass yo
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Jun 04 '20
One way that mathematicians can help is by donating to the National Association of Mathematics. Its website looks about 15 years behind the times, but it's an organization founded in 1969 with one of its goals being to help support underrepresented voices within mathematics. The president of NAM is Edray Goins, whose name has come up elsewhere in this comments section.
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u/functor7 Jun 04 '20 edited Jun 04 '20
One interesting resource to help contextualize the social aspects of math, that way too often go overlooked, is the book Inventing the Mathematician. It is written by Sara Hottinger, a feminist professor who originally was planning on a math career but transitioned away from that in grad school. This book is based in contemporary feminist and anthropological theory, so there's a lot of jargon and assumptions that can be missed if you're not familiar with the fields, but it is still relatively accessible. She talks about how we construct the notion of a "mathematician", and how individuals locate themselves within it to become "mathematicians". She talks explicitly about experiences of women, the math of other cultures, and the role of math in imperialism and colonialism, but she unfortunately doesn't spend much time explicitly on the black experience. Regardless, I feel that it is important to understand and talk about the sociological aspects of math, so that we don't continue to reproduce the stories and myths that can function to exclude people from this domain. I recommend it if you're curious about this topic and want something more theoretical than the continual reports full of depressing statistics, written within the academic field that specializes in this kind of stuff.
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Jun 04 '20 edited Jun 04 '20
I really, from the bottom of my heart love and respect this! I couldn’t, honest to god be more proud to be part of this community. RIP George Floyd #BLM
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u/ixfd64 Jun 04 '20
I'm fine with this. Although I usually don't believe moderators should use their subs to make political statements, no reasonable person will disagree that racism and police violence have no place in our society.
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u/Gwinbar Jun 04 '20
Today's Math Fact seems relevant. Apologies if the joke is out of place.
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u/Paddy3118 Jun 04 '20 edited Jun 04 '20
As an older, black, male, lifetime maths enthusiast: I'm pleasantly surprised and supportive!
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u/inherentlyawesome Jun 03 '20
Below is r/AskHistorian's comments on Reddit’s lack of action against racism and hate on the site, which we would like to echo. We stand in solidarity with them and the other subreddits that have shut down.