Antiracist Work in Mathematics Classrooms

Abstract

Uprisings against police violence have placed the institution of policing front and center in conversations about societal change. In our work with activists, we have engaged in collecting and analyzing public records data to inform community organizing for change. In this editorial we discuss how to obtain, interpret, and analyze public records on policing as a way to support educators and youth to investigate policing in their own communities. Specifically, we discuss how to embed this work in Youth Participatory Action Research as a way to respond to youth concerns about their community in a way that leads to action. Briefly, we illustrate how this occurred in one classroom in an urban school where students made meaningful connections between their analyses of local police data and their personal experiences with racially disparate policing, which led some students to become change agents in their communities. This work demonstrates the simultaneous cultivation of youth engagement with mathematics and activism.

Keywords

• mathematics
• policing
• public records
• racism
• YPAR