The Department of Education in Oregon recently informed state educators that teaching Mathematics as Objective Truth is a form of White Supremacy. Recommending teachers take a course entitled “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction,” the proclamation suggests that asking students of a non-Western ethnic background to answer math questions “correctly” and mark them accordingly is a species of racism.
Now if you investigate, for example, the notion of Indigenous Science, you will find it described in terms such as holistic, empathetic and even spiritual. In the “anti-racist” world of Ibram X. Kendi, all cultural orientations are equally valid, equally worthy of respect. It’s the moral/intellectual relativism at the heart of “progressivism.” But having embraced that principle, you can’t then blame the cultural and material squalor of those who failed to embrace Reason, Science and Math, on White people! The notion of White Privilege as it is used today is crassly hypocritical and ultimately absurd. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t defend Ideas and Values that clearly lead to social/economic failure and then blame others for that failure.
The sentiment expressed by the Oregon Dept. of Education is promoted in a number of contexts to varying degrees throughout the political Left. What it amounts to is a tacit admission that “progressives” DO NOT BELIEVE IN REASON! Those “liberals” who see themselves as moderate Left would of course disagree, the conventional wisdom being that “conservatism” is rampant with religious fundamentalists who believe the earth is flat. But nothing of what I and those I revere define as “conservatism” is rooted in revealed religious truth while I could with no effort whatsoever make a couple of dozen assertions based on a Rational Interpretation of Scientific Reality which, if published, would aggressively, peremptorily be denounced as “hate speech” by the sanctimonious Left.
The daunting issue for we “conservatives” is that productive dialogue with those who don’t believe in Reason is literally impossible!