Black Feminist Mathematics Pedagogies (BlackFMP): A curricular confrontation to gendered antiblackness in the US mathematics education system

This essay introduces Nicole Joseph’s Black Feminist Mathematics Pedagogies (BlackFMP), a theoretical and pedagogical model grounded in Black feminism and Black girlhood. BlackFMP is a framework in service of the disruption of gendered antiblackness found in the US mathematics education system. For far too long, mathematics curriculum and pedagogies have mainly served middle-class White students leaving Black girls invisible and vulnerable. Because Black girls are mischaracterized and misunderstood through deep-seeded stereotypes, they are infrequently positioned by mathematics teachers and educators as producers of mathematical knowledge. Consequently, their opportunities to develop robust mathematics identities are fragmented because of Western constructions of who is a mathematician. BlackFMP has four dimensions including: ambitious mathematics instruction, critical consciousness and reclamation, academic and social integration, and robust mathematics identities 2.0. BlackFMP is a type of Wakandian experience for Black girls whereby their intersectional identities are recognized and affirmed in the mathematics context. Implications for mathematics teachers, educators in general, curriculum developers, and Black girls and their families are discussed.