Commentary 2: Missing in the numbers: Examination of Teacher and Racial Identities: A Commentary on Aguirre’s Case

I enjoyed reading this case study, which focused on a White female preservice teacher as she attempted to infuse her mathematics teaching pedagogy within an anti-deficit, culturally affirming frame for a 4th-grade female student of Mexican descent named Angela. With that said, I would like to offer some strategies and suggestions to potentially improve the experience of the preservice teacher and her racially and culturally diverse students.

For more than 10 years, I have been researching the lives and experiences of Black STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) students, from high school all the way up through the pipeline to Black STEM faculty status. Having endured the challenges associated with being Black, female, and a “doer of mathematics” (Martin, 2006), I have come to understand that my experiences are similar to those of the students I research and teach. My research has been influenced by theories of race and racism, which have helped me recognize that issues around power, privilege, race, class, and sexual oppression are at the root of many of the academic barriers these students face and of the devaluation of their essential human attributes based on race and its intersection with class and gender (McGee, 2014).