Journalists often joke that they entered their profession so they wouldn’t have to work with numbers. In the article, “A Real Fear,” Diverse correspondent Paul Ruffins writes that people who fear math have a tendency to avoid math-related classes, which, as a result, decreases their math competence. Often times, minorities and women internalize the stereotype that these two groups do not excel in math.
Howard University math professor Louise Raphael says she’s constantly confronting attitudes like, “Nobody in my whole family can do math,” or “You know ‘our folks’ just aren’t good at this.” Paul reports on what scholars are doing to help students overcome math anxiety.
In “Digging Out of the Digital Divide,” Diverse correspondent Peter Galuszka interviews Randal Pinkett, someone who has weighed in over the years with the magazine on issues of minority access to technology. We always knew he was something special, but the rest of the world got to see what he was made of when he was named winner of Donald Trump’s NBC reality show, “The Apprentice,” in 2005. Randal, who is quite busy with his Trump obligations as well as his own company, BCT Partners, discusses broadband Internet access, math anxiety and whether the digital divide actually still exists.
Hilary Hurd Anyaso
Editor
© Copyright 2005 by DiverseEducation.com
