Cultivating Racial Solidarity Among Mathematics Education Scholars of Color to Resist White Supremacy

In this paper, we propose a racial solidarity praxis in mathematics education grounded in Black-, Latinx-, and Indigenous-led scholarship and their respective communities’ joining efforts to combat White supremacy. Increased solidarity across racial groups in mathematics education could illuminate new ways of nourishing and affirming Indigenous, Latinx, and Black students’ racial identities and cultural strengths. We leverage four frameworks: (1) Whiteness as property (a tenet of Critical race theory) and (2) Tribal Critical Race Theory; (3) Latino Critical Theory; and (4) pedagogy of solidarity, to conceptualize the interdependence required for solidarity work and to expose how White supremacy is maintained overtly and covertly in mathematics curriculum, policies and practices. This study outlines the nuances across each community of scholars, drawing on their strengths to combat oppressive educational structures for students. The authors conclude in solidarity, focusing on the ways our communities have sought to challenge White supremacy and deficit framings of our students, families, and communities. Our hope in bringing these bodies of literature together is to invite others within (and outside of) the field of mathematics education to co-imagine how we might engage our work synergistically. It is through a collectivizing of efforts that we imagine a racial solidarity praxis that begins to erode the power of White supremacy in math education because of the unique and unassimilable strengths and priorities of each community engaged.