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Unpacking Neutrality when Responding to Microaggressions in Mathematics

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 Unpacking Neutrality when Responding to Microaggressions in Mathematics Classrooms

Antonio Martinez Rebecca Machen Kaia Ralston

San Diego State University University of Colorado Boulder San Diego State University

Tyler Sullivan Adriana Corrales Matthew Voigt

Clemson University University of North Texas Clemson University

In this contributed report, we document results from the third and final round of interviews with
14 mathematics instructors. In the interviews, we presented two teaching scenarios about a
racial microaggression and white-supremacy messaging, and asked what the instructors would
do if they encountered such a scenario in their own classroom. Results from our study indicate
that some of the participants would do nothing to address the scenario publicly in class. This
neutrality resembled similar responses as those from our second round of interviews, but there
was a nuance that differentiated the third interview results. That is, of the participants that opted
not to address the scenario publicly, they also condemned the scenarios privately as something
that was inappropriate, as opposed to avoiding and minimizing the situation. We find that doing
nothing in response to a potentially problematic social justice scenario can be interpreted in two
distinct ways.

Keywords: race, microaggression, teaching scenarios

With the push for increased diversity and inclusion efforts in higher education (U.S.
Department of Education, 2016), university educators should be prepared to engage with and
encourage the incorporation of diverse thoughts and experiences that our students bring to the
classroom. Diversity not only leads to new ideas coming from different lived experiences, but as
technology continues to improve in the hands of the newest generation, a diverse workforce in
STEM may curtail the impact of biased systems such as facial recognition software (Garvie &
Frankle, 2016; Nkonde, 2019), and machine learning (Garcia, 2016). Advocating for justice in
the STEM classroom is the first step to allow students and instructors to recognize their own
prejudices and biases. This is particularly important as women, people of color, and other
marginalized groups of students are at a higher risk of failing introductory mathematics, being
pushed out of STEM altogether (Koch & Drake, 2018; Weston et al., 2019). The idea of failure
and marginalization is reinforced for these groups with every offensive comment made, which is
why university instructors should be prepared to handle difficult conversations in the classroom
and support the students that need it most.
As research has demonstrated, active learning classrooms have the potential to provide
superior learning environments compared to non-active ones (Freeman et al., 2014; Theobald,
2020). However, with the use of active learning comes the potential for conflict in the classroom,
as students are encouraged to engage with one another’s ideas and interact much more compared
to lecture classrooms. That is, within any setting of peer-to-peer interaction, problematic
discussions around race, politics, gender, and other topics may arise. University instructors are
not necessarily trained to handle these situations, which may lead to unproductive conversations
and the marginalization of certain groups of students. Such problematic scenarios may present
themselves as explicit acts of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. Although, they may also occur as
more subtle acts of hostility and enmity known as microaggressions.
As a research team composed of faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, our stance is
that the university classroom should be a space where students learn how to engage with one
another around controversial ideas. If university is not a place to challenge students’ ways of
reasoning and encourage civil discourse, then where is the right place? Research suggests that
having these discussions in class can be difficult, but has the potential to foster the development
of productive community engagement and tolerance (Camp, 2020; Hess & Gatti, 2010; Moran,
2009). With that in mind, we challenged a group of university instructors by presenting to them a
set of potentially problematic teaching scenarios in which they were asked to respond as if they
were the instructor. The goal of presenting these scenarios was to answer the following research
question: In what ways can a neutral stance by university mathematics instructors be interpreted
when addressing racial microaggressions and supremacist attitudes in the classroom?

Literature Review
Mathematics instructors at the college-level typically have undergraduate and graduate
degrees in mathematics or closely related fields. This extensive background in mathematical
content makes them experts in the discipline. However, there is often limited training on a major
component of their roles at universities – teaching – where most doctoral students only take one
course on undergraduate teaching (Baum & McPherson, 2019). Effective teaching requires
knowledge of the content, strategies to teach the content, practices to assist with classroom
management, and knowledge of learners and learning (Eggen & Kauchak, 2006). Student
learning not only includes specific content but also the development of interpersonal and cross-
cultural competencies, expected outcomes of a college degree.
Engagement strategies shown to promote student learning in mathematics classrooms, like
the utilization of group work or active learning (Smith et al, 2021), increases the need for college
faculty to have competent classroom management skills. Duek (2000) and D.W. Johnson and
Johnson’s (1989, 1991, 1992, 1994) research on productive cooperative learning environments
supports the argument for additional training on classroom management practices. Two of the six
elements of productive cooperative learning environments, value of heterogeneity and
interpersonal communication, require skills to manage classroom discussion. As students engage
in conversation with one another through group work, conversation may move to current events,
like racial tensions or political conflict. When these emotionally charged conversations occur
between students, faculty should be prepared to respond appropriately to ensure the classroom
environment is operating as an inclusive space. Student belonging is an important element of
inclusion, and ample research has linked belonging to persistence in higher education (Solorzano
et al., 2000; Clark et al., 1999; Mercer et al., 2011; Torres, et al., 2010; Bair & Steele, 2010;
Salvatore & Shelton, 2007).
In the context of this study, we are operating under the assumption that race and racism is
inherent to society’s systems, including the education system, and is difficult to address if not
directly acknowledged (Delgado & Stefancic 2017; Bourdieu, 2018). Research suggests that
there is a lack of noticing or acknowledgement of bias in the classroom for STEM educators
(Boysen et al., 2012). For educators who do recognize the inequity and issues of racism in the
classroom, they often struggle to devise a response in practice (Duncan-Andrade, 2009;
Solórzano & Delgado-Bernal, 2001). They may not feel qualified to craft a response or confront
larger issues in practice, even though they hold a critical stance on the issue at hand.
 The prior research within the field of education suggest that faculty must respond to
microaggression incidents in order to avoid “siding with the offender” and creating a hostile
environment for the affected students, typically students of color, women, and people in the
LGBT community (Boysen et al., 2012; Sue et al., 2007; Hernandez et al., 2010). Faculty can
ameliorate the situation through a variety of actions, the first being a recognition of their own
biases. This idea is often conveyed in critiques of modern liberalism in which neutrality and
colorblindness are upheld as critical practices to eradicate issues of race and racism (Delgado &
Stefancic, 2017). This neutral perspective generally does not address more covert acts of racism
in society and can only address the most egregious and outward forms of racism. This also
extends to arguments of the right to free speech, in which hate speech toward minoritized groups
may be protected (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017), highlighting how societal structures allow racism
and microaggressions to occur. The argument to ensure rights to free speech may even prevent
the formation of close communities, which develop through mutual negotiation and dialogue
(Wenger, 1999).

Researcher Positionality
As a data collection and analysis team, our personal identities represent diversity in gender,
sexuality, race/ethnicity, and academic ranks. We recognize that the data collection team’s
positionality likely impacted the rapport, comfort, and safety of participants to share their lived
experiences and beliefs. Our personal experiences and positionality were also leveraged to
interpret and understand the shared experiences of our participants. While inherently
reductionist, we share some of the identities of the authorship team to help contextualize our
positionality. Author 1 identifies as a cisgender straight Chicano, Author 2 as a cisgender queer
white woman, Author 3 as a cisgender Asian and African American woman, Author 4 as a
cisgender white queer man, Author 5 as non-binary queer Chicanx person, and Author 6 as a
cisgender white queer man.

Methods
The data from this study draws on a set of interviews with 14 mathematics instructors (see
table 1) from nine institutions who agreed to participate in a Professional Learning Community
(PLC). The PLC activities started in September 2020, with virtual meetings occurring every two
weeks, focusing on diversity and inclusion in undergraduate mathematics. The nine different
institutions were all partners in the NSF-funded SEMINAL project which was examining
departmental change efforts to infuse active learning in introductory mathematics courses.
Participants were interviewed three times at the start, middle, and end of the year-long PLC. The
interviews included questions about instructional practices, departmental support, and responses
to a set of 4-5 teaching scenarios. The 1-hour long semi-structured interviews were conducted by
members of the research team in pairs via Zoom and were audio and video recorded. The
interview transcripts were automatically generated by Zoom, reviewed by the research team for
clarity, and loaded into the qualitative coding software MAXQDA for analysis. The transcripts
and audio recordings were linked within MAXQDA to ensure interpretability, tone, and pauses.
The analysis in this manuscript focuses on three different teaching scenarios. The first
scenario, Zoom Microaggression, describes a situation in which a student posts a racial
microaggression about another student in the chat during class and instructors were asked how
they would respond. The Zoom microaggression scenario was presented in the first and third
interview. The second scenario, Classroom Microaggression (BLM), describes a situation where
a student is wearing a Black Lives Matter hat, and another student reacts saying “All Lives
Matter.” The third scenario, Classroom Microaggression (Alt-Right) is a variation on the
Classroom Microaggression (BLM), but in this scenario a student is wearing clothing in their
mathematics classroom with the insignia of an Alt-right movement (Proud Boys, Neo-nazis).
Table 1. Participant Gender and Racial Identity as Perceived by the Researchers
Gender and Racial Identity Pseudonym

white woman Emma, Shea, Lacy, Kathleen, Crystal, Cassandra

white man Thomas, Bill, Mark

Woman of Color Shivya, Camila, Aadaya

Man of Color Robert, Collin

As a research team, we conducted a thematic analysis of the interviews, which is “a method

for identifying, analyzing, and reporting patterns (themes) within data” (Braun & Clarke, 2006,
p. 79). We used a cyclical approach to our analysis, analyzing and reporting results from the first
interviews (Machen et al., 2021), followed by the second interviews (Ralston et al., 2021), and
we present new findings from the third interview in this manuscript. Prior analysis by Machen
and colleagues (2021) identified five archetypes emerging from the first round of interviews and
included the: Action Taker, Cautionary, Connector, Confidant, and Thinker. Some participants
had overlapping archetypes based on their reactions to the microaggression scenario. During the
second set of interviews a sixth archetype was identified (Ralston et al., 2021), the Neutral, as
many of the faculty’s responses indicated hesitation or an interest in keeping their actions neutral
due to the concern of impinging on free speech. Analysis of the third set of interviews which
included issues of free speech, politics, and covert racism, suggested that the actions (or lack
thereof) by faculty were more nuanced than the Neutral category suggested from prior analysis.

Results
We found that the participants’ responses were nuanced enough to merit the splitting of the
Neutral archetype into two strands, Apolitical and Conflicted. As we were coding the responses
to the third interview, we noticed that the existing Neutral archetype that was generated from the
second round of interviews was not entirely capturing some of the participants’ responses to the
Far-Right scenario. For this reason, we went back to the Neutral codes from the BLM scenario
and compared those with the responses that were being coded as Neutral for the third interview.
Below we highlight some excerpts from the BLM scenario that are representative of the
Apolitical archetype. We then provide excerpts of participants’ responses that characterize the
new framing of the Conflicted archetype.
The Apolitical archetype that emerged from the responses to the BLM scenario in the second
interview generally reflected a sense of not wanting to take a side in the situation. A common
motif was the idea that, as one participant put it, “everybody is entitled to their own view or their
own opinion.” Other participants would have liked more context and clarification on the scenario
in order to determine how they would respond, as Collin suggested, “I've had the joke with my
friends that we’ll mockingly say ‘all lives matter’ to each other, just to mock the people who
have that sort of opinion.” Even without the additional context, Collin went on to say that he
thinks intervening into the situation and saying something to the students is “more dangerous for
me, as an instructor, to make a bigger deal of it than is being made by the students.” This theme
of causing more harm than good was echoed by other participants characterized with the
Apolitical archetype as multiple instructors were apprehensive about taking attention away from
the mathematics. Cassandra described the actions they would take to try and redirect the focus
back to mathematics:
My initial reaction would be like ‘hey that's not math content, take it outside’ you know, or …
‘we can work on math today, and you guys can talk about that later’ or … ‘this is not the
time or the place for this conversation.’ You know, and I would try to say something like, ‘we
all have different opinions about different things, but right now we're working on co-
functions, so can we work on co-functions, please.’ You know, just try to defuse the situation.
Generally, the Apolitical archetype characterizes an approach that would prefer to move past the
situation, either because the instructor does not see the offending students’ actions arising to a
level that warrants an intervention or having a discussion in class is not appropriate for a
mathematics class. Four of the 14 participants responded to the BLM scenario with some action
that was characterized as Apolitical; however, it is important to note that these are not fixed traits
that we are assigning to the participants. In some cases, a participant might suggest one approach
reflecting an Apolitical preference, but also later take an approach as a Confidant in that they
would pull the offending student to the side to have a one-on-one conversation or with the
aggressed student about what had occurred in class.
What we noticed with the Far-Right scenario represented a different stance altogether. That
is, for the Apolitical archetype, the participants' actions could be categorized as not taking a side
or not wanting to intervene because they did not see it as appropriate. In contrast, participant
responses to the Far-Right scenario characterized a situation in which the participant would take
a stance (in theory), but would not intervene, even though they knew that something should be
done. The important distinction that we are making here is the idea that the responses reflecting
the Conflicted archetype generally take an approach of condemnation, rather than one of
minimization. Lacy’s reaction to the scenario describes the Conflicted archetype well in that they
know that this Far-Right scenario is problematic, but is unsure about how to respond given the
context of the situation:
To do nothing is not acceptable. I think, in years past, to just ignore it and go on was
acceptable. I don't think it's acceptable, [the instructor] needs to do something. What [they]
need to do, I don't know because I don't know the makeup of the class … The only thing I can
say is yes, it needs to be addressed, yes, something should be done. Even if it's after the fact, I
think [addressing the scenario] should be done.
Although Lacy takes a firm stance that something should be done and this scenario is
unacceptable, she does not describe what she would do herself because she is unsure about the
context. From our perspective, we interpret this as not taking action but still having a
condemning stance on the issue, stating that this scenario is unacceptable. Another instructor had
a different reason as to why they would not address the scenario in class,
The student who is wearing [the far-right clothing] is wearing it because they want to stir the
pot, they want to offend people, they want attention right? So, if this was me, am I going to
call this person out? No, because that's what the student wants, right? They want to make
this space about them, and these ideas. So I don't think I would do something publicly … I
don't think people that wear neo-Nazi t-shirts are unaware that that is offensive right? They
do it because they want to offend people, they want attention.
Bill’s response was something that we initially interpreted as apolitical given that they did not
explicitly condemn the scenario as being problematic. However, we interpret Bill’s response as a
condemnation in that Bill does not want to give the offending student a voice in the classroom to
spread hate and neo-Nazi ideals. We also saw a Conflicted response from Kathleen, as she
wanted to do something about this scenario, and offered one potential avenue to stop the student
from wearing far-right clothing, but was grappling with her ideals of freedom of speech.
This is really tough because I believe in freedom of expression … I do think that these shirts
are inappropriate. Because the shirt is specifically promoting hate … The university must
have some kind of dress code and if the dress code mentioned something about hate speech
or this kind of propaganda or promotion, then, absolutely … If it doesn't, I don't think that
[the instructor] really has a right to tell the student what they can and cannot wear.
However, if we're doing some kind of group work and somebody doesn't want to work with
the student because they find what they're wearing is offensive, or it makes them feel
uncomfortable, then I'm not going to force them to stay in a group.
Three participants reflected a Conflicted response to the Far-Right scenario, with the Conflicted
archetype also arising twice with the Zoom Microaggression scenario in the third interview. One
participant, Bill, had a Conflicting response to both the Far-Right scenario and the Zoom
microaggression scenario. Overall, four participants from the third interview provided responses
that we coded as the Conflicted archetype. Interestingly, we did not characterize any of the
responses from the third interview as Apolitical. In Table 2 we document the definitions of the
two archetypes for posterity.

Table 2. Definitions of the Apolitical and Conflicted archetypes.

Apolitical The “Apolitical” archetype reflects actions that avoid and dismiss the situation.
Respondents that fall into this category often did not want to take a stance on
the issue and leave it to the students to handle any potential conflict. Some
characterized as Apolitical worried it might trigger an emotional reaction from
students, and/or they did not feel capable of facilitating a meaningful discussion
about social justice issues. As a result, actions represented by this archetype
tend to minimize the situation to avoid bringing discussions about politics or
racism into the classroom.
Conflicted The “Conflicted” archetype reflects actions that avoid, but condemn the
situation. Respondents that fall into this category often know that the situation
is wrong and something should be done to resolve any potential conflict, but
may not know the best approach to do so. We see the actions of those
characterized by the Conflicted archetype as a minimum requirement of allyship
with the marginalized and oppressed; knowing that an injustice has occurred is
the first step to intervening and facilitating a productive conversation about
social justice issues.

In the next section we provide a summary of the two new archetypes that emerged from the third
interview and our thoughts as to why we saw the emergence of the Conflicted archetype, and
absence of the Apolitical, in the third interview.

Discussion
 Our research study involved presenting 14 university mathematics instructors with difficult
teaching scenarios and asking how they would respond to those scenarios if they were teaching
in the classroom. After the third and final interview with the research participants, we noticed a
nuance in the instructors’ responses to neutrality that we considered to be valuable to unpack.
This nuance was particularly interesting in that the action that the instructors would take was, in
fact, no action at all. That is, in the second interview, the participants that mentioned that they
would not address the scenario in class often wanted to move past the scenario by downplaying
the seriousness of the comments made, opting to rely on the idea that everyone is entitled to their
own opinions or commenting that the mathematics classroom was not the space to have those
types of conversations. This approach was referred to as the Apolitical archetype. In this
manuscript, we highlight the emergence of a new archetype, the Conflicted, as a similar, but
different approach. With those that fell into the Conflicted category, they also opted not to
address the scenario in class, but wanted to make it clear that the scenario was unacceptable or
something should be done as a way to condemn the action taken by the offending student. Our
purpose with highlighting the difference between the Apolitical and Conflicted archetypes is to
consider what it means not to address these difficult conversations in class from a critical
perspective.
A particular point of interest based on our results is the absence of the Apolitical archetype in
the third interview. We hypothesize that verbal microaggressions are easier to minimize and
ignore compared to a physical manifestation or racial aggression such as the far-right messaging
on the clothing. Furthermore, it may be easier for mathematics faculty, and particularly white
faculty, to notice and condemn white supremacy compared to facilitating more nuanced
discussion of race, racial microaggressions, and political movements. Moreover, what are the
implications of approaching difficult scenarios as Conflicted compared to Apolitical? We
consider this as an open question for future research, but for now we offer a few of our thoughts.
From our perspective, we see the BLM scenario as an easier scenario to downplay and
ignore, due to the fact that it was a verbal microaggression and the potentially ambiguous nature
of the context in which the microaggression occurred. However, we would like to address the
microaggression for what it is, covert racism in the classroom. We see the responses that were
categorized as Conflicted to be a productive step in that the instructors that opted for a “neutral”
stance still condemned the overt act of white-supremacy, as teaching is inherently a political act
(Kozleski & Waitoller, 2010). They knew that something should be done, even though they did
not know exactly what that something was. We see the identification of how one might approach
these difficult situations as an important professional development practice that all instructors
should consider. Future work will address how all of the archetypes that emerged from the three
rounds of interviews might impact our teaching practices, and we will explore what it means to
bring conversations of racism, politics, and equity into the mathematics classroom.
Acknowledgment
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under
grant numbers 1624639, 1624643. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
NSF.

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