Where Do We Go from Here? Reflecting on #NCTMLA22 and the Slow Violence of Traumatic Math Spaces

I’m sitting at a coffee shop this morning, where I’m supposed to be writing a book chapter. Instead, I find myself lost in thought, in anger, in pain, in disappointment. This has been my constant state since returning from #NCTMLA22 and I don’t know where to go from here. So this morning I made a choice to write about it, in the hopes it will help me process my experience in LA and with the greater math ed community at large. I’m not yet sure if this writing exercise is simply an act of self-care, or something that I will share with a wider audience. Time will tell.

When I left for LA, I already had a number of complicated feelings about the conference. The lack of COVID protocols were a big red flag, especially as an immunocompromised person, but I also was just generally afraid for my personal safety. My work has been picked up by right wing media outlets before. I’ve received hate mail, death threats, and had to lock down my social media, email, and website, time and time again as a result. Each time, most of the larger math ed community, especially our professional organizations, remained silent. If my work at the conference got picked up like Jamie Kubiaks did at NSTA, would this be more of the same? If a conservative educator showed up at my session and initiated a physical altercation, would I be protected? And these were just the overt physical concerns for my safety. 

This is not a new phenomenon. When Dr. Rochelle Gutiérrez’s scholarship was attacked by conservative media, our major math ed organizations remained silent. That was over 5 years ago, and even with our community charge for so-called equity, and after several years of centering conference themes, book calls, issues and the like on rehumanizing and humanizing mathematics and making big bucks off of Dr.Gutiérrez’s work, our professional spaces are no more humanized or rehumanized for teachers, much less students. This is especially true for those who are BIPOC, queer, trans, and/or disabled. The LA opening keynote was a prime example of that. With a conference theme of “One Mathematics, Many Voices: Sharing Our Collective Stories of Rehumanizing Mathematics Teaching and Learning”, instead of having a keynote speaker that either pioneered the field (i.e., Dr. Rochelle Gutiérrez), edited the book on rehumanizing mathematics (i.e., Dr. Rochelle Gutiérrez & Dr. Imani Goffney), or any author that contributed to chapters in the book (who were mostly teachers and educators of color), we got a White man, who for all appearances seems cis/het & able-bodied. He’s not a teacher, not even in the field of mathematics education. Oh… and as a kicker, which I hadn’t even put together until someone commented on my post about this on Twitter, this all took place during Hispanic Heritage month. I couldn’t make myself go to this keynote, but from what I heard, it was as offensive as I expected, with the speaker presuming many harmful stereotypes of what math teachers did and did not know about mathematics. 

And that was just the first day… As I attended the conference, I saw folx walking around without masks, with little regard for the health and safety of others. I saw exclusive, invite-only parties and dinners being held by so-called “educelebrities” in the field. To be clear, I’m not talking about affinity group gatherings or gatherings that were for members of specific organizations, I’m talking about gatherings that served to reinforce who is “somebody” in math ed and who isn’t (how humanizing!). 

I saw a White educelebrity come to the TODOS salsa party with a group of White educators and show disgust and disbelief that they had to join TODOS to attend the salsa party. They were appalled that to enter a space that was not theirs they had to pay THIRTY FIVE DOLLARS for a yearly membership to an equity organization dedicated to serving traditionally marginalized students in math, especially Latinx students…during Hispanic Heritage month. This one incident alone…So much to unpack here. Remember, this is an educelebrity that gets paid thousands of dollars to keynote ON TOP OF their day job. 

I went to keynote after keynote that had no ASL interpreter and no live captioning set up to support the speaker. I had to walk up a flight of stairs on a makeshift, unnecessary, podium in one of the rooms where I was presenting. No ramp for wheelchair access. I walked past a “Mother’s suite” that at first I was impressed to see, but the language, which implied only mothers need access to such a space (excluding trans masc and non-binary folx) felt icky and exclusionary. 

I walked around for TWO DAYS before I found a single all-gender restroom. The location was not advertised in any other space throughout the convention. If this were the only location I felt comfortable using the restroom, I would have spent the first two days of the conference having to run back and forth to my hotel room just to relieve myself. That is unacceptable. And sure, I found it and there was ONE (which a board member made sure to retweet and point out, again, what a rehumanizing message for queer folx), but that’s not good enough. Can you imagine if you only had one location to use the bathroom at a conference that spanned a large conference center, as well as a wing of a hotel, and that bathroom’s location was not even heavily publicized? 

I had many White folx come up to me and touch me (no, honey) and tell me how important my work was when these same folx have never even shown up to a single PD offering, free or otherwise, that I’ve offered to actually learn about and show support for queer and trans students. Some of them even avoided me like the plague in any public space. Talk about a humanizing experience. And then some of these same White folx tweeted about how they can see how folx from historically oppressed (but resilient) groups find conferences violent and traumatizing. 

I’ve seen folx tweeting about how they should have worn a mask or taken more precautions. I’m sorry, what??? And still other folx calling for those of us doing equity work to “simplify” that work, to package it nicely and succinctly for the White cis/het able-bodied gaze. I don’t know how much more simple it can get than:

1. Wear a mask
2. Check in on people when they say they feel unsafe or are not ok
3. Prioritize sessions that center on equity work over bullshit sessions that center on number talks or math routines or whatever else, with equity as an afterthought
4. As Ty noted in a tweet earlier today….listen to Black women and to all folx who are living at the margins re: race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, etc.
5. For God’s sake, consult resources from 2SLGBTQIA+ organizations when planning conferences, especially in terms of bathroom access, pronouns, dress code, gendered spaces, etc.
6. Give money to local organizations and marginalized folx doing equity work. Lift up their voices and stop giving your hot take if you are not from one of these communities. Hire them to be keynotes.
7. Provide financial and physical access to these spaces so more people can feel included.

Many have shown that they can’t even do these “simple” things…

I don’t know what to do with any of the emotions I’m feeling and I definitely don’t know where to go from here. Do I keep showing up in these spaces at the risk of my own mental and physical well-being because I believe that we need to do more and start really caring about queer and trans, BIPOC, & disabled youth in education? Do I keep doing this until at least one other person is talking about 2SLGBTQIA+ folx in this particular math ed space (I want to acknowledge that there are others doing incredible work in this area but have given up on this particular organization due to their continued violence and silence re: 2SLGBTQIA+ issues)? As a Latinx queer disabled person who “passes” as White, able, and at times cis/het, do I have a responsibility to stay and fight in these spaces that continue to cause me harm? I don’t know. 

What I do know, is that BIPOC, queer, trans, and disabled folx deserve better. We deserve spaces of thriving. I don’t feel that in this space. And this is not new. Folx have made this same critique after every conference, and yet, here we are. What I feel in these spaces is a bunch of White folx, and even some folx of color and some queer and trans and disabled folx too, who have bought into this system and are getting caught up in a culture of hyping themselves up. While in LA I had many conversations with folx of color about this and the thing that kept coming up, especially since we see many White folx engaging in this behavior, is the question “Is this cultural?” Is this self-hype culture just an extension of colonialism, of western views of individualism? Do we see more folx of color and those most marginalized within the queer, trans, and disabled communities abstaining from these behaviors because of a cultural embrace of collective wellbeing?  Is the reason it was predominantly folx of color who checked in with me (since they saw my tweet about feeling unsafe in these spaces back in June) rooted in a cultural leaning toward community wellness? Is the fact that most of the folx that we still see masking are folx of color all tied into this? And if it is cultural…what does that even mean? What do we do with that? How do we push folx, particularly White folx, to do better? To be better? To even see these things that are causing the ‘slow violence’ that Dr. Gutiérrez has noted as hallmark of traumatic math spaces? I don’t know. All I know is, I’m so very tired.