What “access” assumes, and what it costs
There is a moment in Hidden Figures that everyone remembers. Kevin Costner’s character hands Katherine Johnson (played by Taraji P. Henson) a piece of chalk. She steps to the board. The room watches her work the equation no one else in the room could solve, and for a moment, the film lets us feel something like justice.
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I want to love that scene. Part of me does. But watch it again and notice what it’s actually showing you: the chalk moves from his hand to hers. He holds it. He extends it. She receives it. Access, granted.
We tell this story as triumph. I want to tell you it’s also a diagram — a perfect, unintentional diagram of the question we keep asking about Black children and mathematics: how do we give them access?
It sounds like the right question. It sounds, even, like justice. But notice what the question assumes before you’ve answered it: that mathematics is a place. That the place has a gate. That someone stands at the gate with the authority to decide who passes through. The only thing left to debate is policy — who qualifies, what the criteria should be, how generous or strict the gatekeeper ought to be. The gate itself, and the hand that built it, disappear from view.