Category: Other essays

Why are some White people so upset about losing Aunt Jemima? Please note: I’m White. While I’m glad you’re reading this, make sure you’re reading Black voices. If you decide to skip this and do that instead, wonderful. Some suggestions: Ijeoma Oluo, Ibram X. Kendi, Matthew Kay, Carol Anderson, bell hooks, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Angie Thomas, and…

Madonna recently referred to the COVID-19 pandemic as “the great equalizer”. In the sense that any infection itself doesn’t care about wealth, ethnicity, or background, she’s right. But the harsh reality is that our US culture is deeply steeped in inequities that impact our experiences, including during times of crisis like this. Both the mainstream news…

For Black History Month 2020, I wrote a brief biography of noteworthy African-American mathematicians. This is not meant to be a canonical, prioritized, or exhaustive list, although many of these mathematicians are often on “best of” or “firsts” lists. There are many more Black mathematicians whose names deserve to be known, a list that grows…

Recently, there was criticism of the “Who Was…” book on Harriet Tubman, based on its depiction of a young enslaved Harriet as being happy despite her situation. At the time, it was pointed out that the author of the book is White. I researched the “Who Was…” series in general and found that most of…

It’s become a common complaint these days: “Okay, boomer!” is ageist. No, it’s not. It’s a rebuttal to ageism. Full disclosure: I’m from Generation X, but I’m only a few years too young to be a Boomer. I got my Bachelors Degrees on a full ride, and my student loan debt and early career wheel-spinning…

This is a post on language and linguistics, one of my other passions. This is also largely an educated riff; there has been a lot written on this subject, and I do not profess to higher mastery than what comes before. While reading Milne’s Elements of Arithmetic (1893), I noticed questions like these: “How many boys…