Commentary 3: Supporting Novice Mathematics Teachers’ Racial Consciousness: A Commentary on Bieda’s Case

As a White man, I struggle to understand how White folks can deny that racism is rampant in the United States. Bonilla-Silva (2014) helped us understand how contemporary racism takes on different forms than the overt racism of the past, but I still work hard to understand the prevalence/ prominence of color-blind and post-racial perspectives in our communities. I operate from a place where I acknowledge that I contribute to racist discourses, acts, and systems of oppression everyday through my White privilege, which includes the luxury of not having to grapple with racist microagressions (and overt aggressions) on a daily—or even hourly—basis. I also acknowledge that I will not reach a finite point of racial consciousness where I am not contributing to racist structures and discourses; but I, like all White folks, have the agency to try to “see” racism, and “hear” the narratives of people of color, so as to lessen the effects of racism incrementally over time. Admittedly, there is a lot of structural undoing and systemic rethinking to do, as Martin (2015) has recently reminded us, specifically referencing the institutional enterprise of mathematics education: