Letter to the Editor: Recognize Professional Privilege
Editor’s note: This will also appear in Notices of the American Mathematical Society in September.
The video of Mr. George Floyd dying on the street is too difficult to watch, yet its impact has been profound. Academia needs to reflect on this incident. Seven decades ago, universities began ramping up the research component of mathematics departments. Since then, meager handfuls of minorities have obtained doctorates from mathematical sciences and statistics (MSS) departments each year. The mathematical aspirations of countless minorities have died in silence. No video recorded these deaths. When was the last time that you advised a Native American undergraduate or discussed mathematics with a Native American mathematician? This glaring lack of contact with this one important minority group is evidence of the harm inflicted by MSS departments on the minority population in general.
The current unrest that we see on the streets is connected to white privilege. I earned a PhD in mathematics. This led me out of poverty and granted me privileges. I had a safe work environment, a regular paycheck, health insurance, and retirement account. I traveled around the world and I own a home. Few minorities have these privileges.
There is an implicit social contract between the minority community and MSS departments. The tax dollars of minorities support the research and privileges of faculty in MSS departments, and in return, MSS departments educate minority children. That social contract has broken.
I call on our profession to recognize the professional privilege in which we live, to reformulate departmental policies, attitudes, and programs of study with a view toward producing an equitable educational system for women and minorities and all our citizens. How much longer must women and minorities call for change? Must we wait for calls to defund our MSS departments? On the other hand, will MSS departments take the lead in addressing reform?
William Yslas Vélez
Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, University of Arizona
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Dear Professor Velez,
You’re a tenured educator, so I’m taking your abilities for granted. While your credentials seem good and your use of language is top notch, like many in this society, your perceptions are colored. A man of your esteem should be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Don’t take the shortcoming to heart. Many otherwise competent people don’t realize the media is leading them down the garden path to a constructed narrative. The first line of your “Letter to the Editor” is a falsehood. There is no video of George Floyd dying on the street. And yes, what is being presented in the popular video is extremely difficult to watch. But I repeat, there is no video of George Floyd dying on the street. You see, Mr. Floyd died an hour later at the hospital. The coroner stated he had enough fentanyl in him to kill any normal adult. One of the main effects of fentanyl is suppressed respiratory function. I found the image of that cop’s knee on his neck as sickening as anybody, but when George Floyd died he was 60 minutes and miles away from that knee and the autopsy showed no damage to his trachea or airway. All this misguided martyrdom for a man that was a sad, flawed human being and the real criminal act is the hijacked machinery of our society leading a huge sector of citizenry into a destructive mindset that is flawed, false and plain dishonest. As I can only guess what the motivation is behind this, the main takeaway is that the main victim here is the truth. Think about that word. TRUTH. Doesn’t that word or concept exist anymore? One thing is for sure. This paragraph states what is factual and true. One thing about the truth. It ain’t always pretty, but it’s always THE TRUTH.