Here’s Why Math Is Critical to Young Black Students

By Aswad Walker | Houston Defender | Word In BlackThis& post& was originally published on& Defender Network(WIB) – To let modern educational statistics tell it, Black K-12 students and Black people in general are horrible at math.But truth be told, there is no mathematics without Black people.Dr. John Henrik Clarke: Credit: CUNY Hunter College.Africans were using math, science, trade and politics to build empires in every corner of the African continent back when Europeans still believed the world was flat. According to several noted historians including Dr. Ivan van Sertima, Dr. John Henrik Clarke and Dr. Yosef ben-Jochannan–to name a few– multiple African kingdoms sent envoys across the Atlantic to distant shores, including the Americas, hundreds of years before Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus) was born.They employed their knowledge of math and science to do so, as did the Dogon of West Africa, who charted the movement of the stars and planets hundreds, if not thousands, of years before NASA owned a telescope.CURRENT MATH REALITYUnfortunately, that information hasn’t translated to modern-day results, partly because the teaching of such history of African genius has been nearly nonexistent in U.S. public schools even before the war on “CRT.”The 2022& National Assessment of Educational...