Afraid of the truth: article against racist history and bad philosophy taken down for MANIFESTLY FALSE and frivolous reasons, which Conversation hides to insinuate
Friday, October 28th, 2016Synopsis: My article “To decolonise math stand up to its false history and bad philosophy” published in Conversation (Global edition) became very popular, but was then taken down on “editorial grounds”. These “editorial grounds” did NOT relate to a single factual flaw or defect in my argument. The “editorial” ground stated in an email from an editor Southey, was this: “you have sited [sic] only your own work to back up your key points.” This frivolous editorial reason is NOT stated publicly just because it is manifestly false (my article did cite plenty of others), so stating it publicly would immediately expose the dishonesty involved in taking down the article. Before announcing the decision to take down the article, no one asked me to explain my side, presumably because asking me would have brought out the truth on record. Such an editorial reason is especially comic in the context: thus, my article principally aimed to rebut Brodie’s earlier article on decolonisation of math which had very carelessly neglected to cite a huge amount of my prior work on the decolonisation of math and science, work which easily shows up even on a Google search. That large amount of my earlier work therefore HAD to be cited in my article. The flaw was in Brodie’s careless article, not in my attempt to rectify that carelessness.
The real reason why my article was taken down is that it was a dangerous piece of dissent. It hit a crucial weak spot in claims used for racist and colonial domination: the false history which was traditionally used to support the bad philosophical claims of “superiority” whether of the white race or of formal math. The article knocked out the prejudices needed for racist and colonial domination, prejudices of the kind accepted also by those who are not explicit racists. My article explained that a decolonised math is possible; taking it down is also an attempt to derail and misguide the push for decolonisation of universities in South Africa. Hiding the public articulation of the exact “editorial reason” for taking down the article helps preserve racist prejudices in the only way possible: by insinuation, not by appeal to facts or arguments. Had any easy refutation of my deeply researched article been possible, the editors would have simply published a rejoinder, not taken down the article. Such editorial excesses aptly illustrate the weaknesses of the Western academic tradition, which allowed the concoction of racist history in the first place.
The background
In an article in the Conversation, Karen Brodie made the absurd statement that “Much, though certainly not all, of mathematics was created by dead white men”. There is nothing new about this absurd claim: numerous “reputable” Western philosophers, such as Hume and Kant have used this argument from false history to assert the non-creativity of blacks, to morally justify racism and slavery. Likewise, Macaulay used the same false history to assert the non-creativity of the non-West in science, to impose colonial education. That education was designed to created a slave mentality1 which the British very much needed to offset their military weakness as colonisers.
To contest the roots of racism and colonialism it is, therefore, necessary to contest this argument from false history, especially the false history of mathematics and science. This is what I did in my article “To decolonise math stand up to its false history and bad philosophy”, published in Conversation (Global edition) on 24 October. In fact I went a step further. I pointed out that the claim that Western math is “superior”, since based on deductive proof, is analogous to claims of racial superiority: not only is there no evidence for Euclid, there are no deductive proofs in the book Elements he supposedly wrote, AND deductive proofs are inferior and more fallible than empirical proofs, contrary to the deep-seated but erroneous belief in Western philosophy. (more…)