Just the fact that she is lumping all minorities together despite the actual exceptional performance of Asian American students is suspect.
Funnily enough, I've noticed that schools -- particularly application-hungry universities -- will count Asian Americans as minorities when calculating the diversity of the student body (especially in promotional materials) but not when the term "minority" is attached to any sort of admissions or financial aid benefit. Hmmm.
Joking aside, however, I agree with Dude and sunnyday that there IS an actual issue at hand here. Quote:
Further, she also worries that evaluations of math skills can perpetuate discrimination against minorities, especially if they do worse than their white counterparts. “If one is not viewed as mathematical, there will always be a sense of inferiority that can be summoned.”
If you don't want students to be negatively judged, then a) actually teach them math, so that there is no gap; and b) make sure the assessment of these skills accurately matches their true mathematical ability. Both these issues involve bias and inequality in our society and schools.
However, it seems to me like this professor is really just making it worse...it almost feels like she's expecting people to be bad at math and accepting it, not challenging them to achieve more.
Just my 2˘.
