- Did you know, mathematics, science, even chemistry were all created on the continent of Africa?

I was taught about Greece and Rome, mathematicians and philosophers, but never about the great minds that built the first known civilizations, recorded the first writings, created papyri, the calendar, time, and built the amazing pyramids, which are architectural and mathematical wonders.

Often, black and brown children are robbed their history and are not taught about these great accomplishments in school or at home, causing them to feel that they can't achieve success in the areas of science, technology and especially mathematics.

According to the Brookings Institute, in the 2020 SAT, the average scores for black students on the mathematics portion of the SAT was 454 and Latino or Hispanic students 478, while white students scored a 547.

The proportion of students reaching college readiness benchmark also differs by race.

Over 59.5% of white students met the college readiness math benchmark, compared to less than a quarter of black students and under a third of Hispanic or Latino students.

There are similar patterns for English, but the gaps are not as stark.

Hello, my name is Pastor Phillip Davis, the host of Courageous Conversations.

On the show today I am blessed to have Assata Moore.

She's an educator, author and founder of Black Math Genius, creator of the Black Math Genius Boot Camp Sankofa Club, a program that is specifically designed to assist black students who need extra help in mathematics.

Don't go anywhere.

We will be right back with Assata Moore.

Well, Assata, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to join me on Courageous Conversations today.

Really excited to talk a little bit about your work.

Share what you're doing and how, you know, your work is impacting our community, and there's a little bit of controversy out there from some school districts, I understand, I'd like to hear a little bit about that.

So, so tell us about the Black Math Genius program and how it came to be.

- Absolutely.

First, thank you for having me here today.

Really appreciate it.

- Sure.

- The Black Math Genius program is intentional about making sure that black students are at the center of their education, especially as it relates to mathematics.

So there's a heavy focus on the historical origins of mathematics, which came out of Central Africa over 40,000 years ago.

There's an emphasis on advanced mathematical concepts.

And so we don't teach down to students.

We go as far as hitting physics, some calculus and even some cryptocurrency in the course, as well as showing them how to program.

- Yeah.

- And the other thing is that it's application based.

So we don't just teach mathematics for the sake of teaching mathematics.

There's a relevancy and an application that students can use.

- Yeah, you know, you mentioned that, you know, the origins of mathematics and for many years, that was hidden, right, from us.

So we learned about Western culture, we learned about Grecian and Roman culture.

But you know, it's like everything emanated and started from there.

Why do you think it's important to teach African-American students, you know, the history and genesis of mathematics?

- The same way that Europeans knew that it was important to steal the ownership of it, right?

Because what it says, when you're looking at it, those are people that look like me.

And it gives this mindset, so they don't have to say white math genius.

It's understood.

I've done workshops and if you ask people to just start naming some scientists and mathematicians, 19 out of 20 times, and you're only going to get that one time if there's a black person in the room, typically, they're going to name all white people, from Zuckerberg, Musk, Rockefeller, so on and so forth.

However, they'll mention Pythagoras, but they won't tell you that the Pythagorean theorem was around 2,600 years before Pythagoras was born.

- Wow.

- And it's still in the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid in Egypt.

And during that time, ancient Egypt was black.

So if it's important for any other culture - you go to China, you go to Israel, anywhere - a people teach about their history and the contributions that they made because it's saying to the young people, this is what we do and this is what you should be doing.

- Right.

That's amazing.

So do you feel that it was purposefully hidden and continues to be purposefully hidden even up until our present times?

- Absolutely.

- Yeah.

- I mean, when you're showing images of young black men in jail...

Someone did a post the other day and they showed these young brothers in a library.

- Mm hmm.

- But the caption said, "instead of drugs, they're reading books."

Now, it could have been great.

But why do we have to associate them with drugs?

Why couldn't it just been brothers reading books, right?

And so we automatically associate the worst.

if you say ghetto, people are going to think black.

- Right, right.

- It is understood that Asian people are going to do well in mathematics, right?

- Right, right.

- So yes, it's intentionally hidden because it continues to play on the agenda of having the people oppressed and not necessarily physically, but mentally and academically as well.

And then you don't have to tell them or give them certain orders.

They're going to do it automatically because they're programmed to do so.

- Wow, that's very powerful.

And you're a former teacher and principal.

And so you were a part of the educational system.

What type of disparities did you experience in there and how did that shape the work that you're doing right now?

- The greatest disparity is actually resources.

And so students are students, no matter what students I've taught, students are students.

Teachers are teachers.

There are many teachers, unfortunately, that do not know their content very well.

You can ask the average mathematics teacher, why do we convert, when we're dividing fractions?

why do we convert it to multiplication and take the reciprocal?

The majority cannot explain that to you.

They just simply regurgitate what they've learned and they've been through the same system.

Resources is the difference.

In our communities the teacher is the number one resource and in many cases, the only resources.

You go to other communities, you have parents with money, you have a stronger tax base.

They're going to be in an after school program, they're going to be in an enrichment program.

They're going to travel to other countries over the summer.

- Right.

- They're going to have all types of other resources, a stronger tax base.

So that is the biggest difference as far as the disparity.

Now, when you look at mathematics and you go back even to the 60s, the home ownership rate has been flat.

So since integration and we got away from our communities, our local schools, where we have black teachers that cared, and we were performing better, since that time, still major science, technology, engineering and mathematics on the decline.

- Yeah.

- Black doctors on the decline.

And then if you look at the wealth gap, it is growing.

There's a direct correlation because by default, black people go into the lowest paying majors.

- Mm hmm.

Mm hmm.

Wow.

So they avoid, we avoid science, technology, engineering, mathematics, which ultimately lead to higher income, higher employment, which then can affect generational wealth and the creation of wealth.

You know, what's interesting to me, Assata, is as a teacher and as a former principal, when you retired, you did not retire into this place of anonymity, but you really begin to engage.

Like, what was the impetus for that?

Was it just what you experienced when you were interacting and working with the students and seeing the disparities?

Because we do know that the disparities many times as you said, are based on resources, right?

Redlining pushed us into certain communities.

Banks wouldn't give us loans, so we couldn't buy our properties and then the tax base was lower.

So the lower resources, you know, different level of teachers and instructors, schools that are not fully funded, and that's institutional and systemic racism at its best.

And then that trickles down to the educational system, which ultimately impacts, you know, whether kids can go off to school or start a business, go off to college.

It's a cycle, isn't it?

And so as a teacher, something moved you to get to retirement and then to launch this Black Math Genius club.

Can you talk a little bit about your journey and what really caused you to step out?

- Truth of the matter is I wanted me a nice condo downtown Chicago, and I wanted to retire in anonymity, right?

- OK. - But then I would have never been able to say why such and such is I'm doing, because it's so easy to say and it's so easy to just be philanthropic and to throw money at things.

- Right.

- But the real work, I wrote a book, Get Your Sh...

Together for adults.

- Nice.

- And what I realized is that my God, the parents need just as much help as the children.

It was like, there's still so much work to be done, even though I've been doing this for 20 plus years.

And you think that we've made growth.

Oftentimes, when I look back, we're even further behind than what we were when I got into this, when I was 18, volunteering as a teacher.

And so it's just so much work to be done and the world is changing so quickly.

You know, this blockchain shirt that I have on right now, we're hearing about bitcoin, NFTs and things like that, right?

- Sure.

- We're going to miss out on another wealth opportunity the same way we did with the dot com era.

- Right.

- Because our children are not proficient in mathematics and knowing how to code.

Everything right now is driving that.

- Right, right.

- And so there was more work that needed to be done.

- Yeah, automation is, you know, and it's a whole new economic movement happening.

And you're right, I like your blockchain.

I'm a big cryptocurrency guy myself.

We're actually doing a whole seminar on cryptocurrency at our church, right?

So that we're not left behind, but we're going to be starting a freedom school this summer to work with students.

We call them scholars.

How important is it to bring mathematics to our kids?

You know, it starts from, it goes K to 12.

Majority of our kids are going to be under fifth grade and under.

- Yeah, I mean, it's extremely important, if you look at where the tech is going.

Quantum physics, IBM has this thing on the website and they're talking about combinatorics.

Combinatorics is in the Black Math Genius program.

When you look at Ethereum blockchain, it's really coding, right, and we have Python programming in the course.

It is paramount, and I'm so glad to hear that you're doing this at your church, so please reach out if you need me to do classes on crypto, right?

- Oh, we will, yes.

- And so it's extremely, extremely important from the standpoint of understanding, creating jobs, creating businesses and also building well.

And too many times we're on the consumer side of things and we're late to the game, right?

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- But we're not on the side where the building is happening.

And right now I'm working with three young people, one of my former students, you know who's grown now and I'm walking them through a project where we're going to do an NFT launch during Nurses Week, right?

And then I'm going to start teaching students how to do it.

I mean, it's... we can't keep being behind the wall.

- That's true.

You know, and I read somewhere that only 4% of the world's population is involved in cryptocurrency right now, right?

So we become early adopters.

And as you said before, so often as African-Americans and minorities we're not a part of the genesis and the beginning of something.

And so that's exciting.

We also, and this is not, you know, press for my church, but we also have a coding program for kids in partnership with the county of Northampton.

So we're trying to really be progressive and actually provide skills that are going to cause our children to be prepared for the upcoming economy, which is actually upon us right now.

So let me get back to mathematics and the black math program.

Talk a little bit about what what's in your program and what the expected outcomes for students that participate in it are.

- Yeah.

Well, first of all, you're making my day.

I mean, that's extremely important work.

And so I don't want to just gloss over that because that's, it's amazing and it is so urgently needed.

So thank you for doing that.

- Yes.

- But the Black Math Genius program, it's a series of different instructional videos that are led by me.

I'm the primary teacher in there, and part of the problem is getting other people to know their content well enough and to also always still study.

I just ordered three books.

I have three more books that are coming.

I'm always reading and studying.

We're never an expert, right?

- Mm hmm.

- And so I'm the lead teacher on this, a series of about 60 videos that's showing students advanced mathematical concepts, the origins of it.

But here's the thing I think that you'll like.

We also deal with morals and values at the beginning.

And so we have the Zulu declaration there.

- Love it.

- We have the principles of Ma'at - truth justice, righteousness, order, balance, harmony and reciprocity, which comes from the 42 declarations of innocence out of ancient Egypt.

- Yes.

- We speak to parents about how to be patient with their children, how to work with them, not compare them to others.

- Mm hmm.

- Knowing that students learn at different rates and then as I said, we have this, this coding piece that's in there and there's a series in there that's called Python for Artists, where it's showing them how to go through in drawing.

And one of the things they draw is a sequence which is from a famous mathematician out of Columbia.

So they're introduced to mathematicians and different concepts globally because yes, we want it to be their center, but the more you know about the world, the more respectful you are of others, right?

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yes.

- So you're doing this amazing work, right?

Educating, uplifting your people.

And there are some school districts now who are pushing back.

I think they're labeling it as critical race theory.

I read the article, but I'd really like for you to share what you're experiencing as it relates to, you know, trying to uplift your community.

- Yeah, when the uproar happened, you know, everyone was like, you know, and I told the people that reached out to me to like, just chill out.

One, put yourself in other people's shoes, right?

- Yeah.

- Because if we heard a program called the White Math Genius Program, with limited thinking, there would be an outrage.

- There would be.

- So you have to step back into real life where people are coming from.

- Right.

- And listen to see what their concerns are and then what we had to do, what I apologized for was the rollout.

I didn't think of West Virginia, Trump Town, West Virginia, right?

I'm in Chicago.

Totally different.

So I could have done more research on how to take it in a way that did not cause such backlash, right?

- Yeah.

- But when they equated it to critical race theory, I had to go back and look up critical race theory!

- "What is critical race theory?"

- "Wait, what is this?

", right?

- Yeah.

- You know, and so then I quickly learned that they don't know what they're talking about, right?

- Right, right.

- Because it's none of that, you know, it's none of that.

What it is doing is that it's teaching true history, the true origins of mathematics, and it's mathematics.

Anyone can learn it.

And we had one parent, she put her son in, a white kid, and she enjoyed it so much that she asked to put the younger brother in as well.

We had three Hispanic students that were in the program as well, and they absolutely loved it.

And then when I did, I went back and I did a presentation for the superintendent and her 21 principals.

All white.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Not a problem, because I started with their why, and I asked them to write down their why.

Why are you a teacher?

And I told them, I said after they did that, I knew what I was going to found.

Not one person on here said that I became a teacher to teach white children.

- Mmm, that's good.

- You wanted to help.

And so when you get people back to their center, most people are good.

- Yes.

- We're in some crazy times right now, but most people are good, and sometimes it's that noise that gets the most attention.

So it was a few people that caused a lot of noise.

And once I was able to go in with a calm head, to be respectful and to listen, we were able to get things on track and move forward.

- That's pretty cool.

What I've learned is that a lot of people just don't know, right?

This whole show, Courageous Conversations, we cover stuff that people didn't learn in school and they're not exposed to.

And our American educational system is very intentional about whitewashing history, right, and softening the blow of the terrorism, right, that happened in our communities so that people don't feel, as our Florida governor says, so white folks don't feel discomfort.

Well, if our folks had to go through the discomfort, your kids can handle learning about the discomfort, right?

And I think that, you know, so just to give some background, you essentially were doing this program in Chicago and then had an opportunity to do it in West Virginia, and that the parents thought that this was consistent with... - Some of the parents.

- Thank you for that.

Yeah, because it's not all, right?

They thought it was a problem because it was going to make their children feel as if what?

I mean, what were they afraid of?

- Yeah, you know, they were saying things like, what if we had a whites only program, it's segregation and so on and so forth.

And I explained to them, you know, if you're shot in the head and you have a splinter on your finger, the doctor is not going to waste any time on that finger.

- Right.

- And so what I explained to them, you know, the black children here, even if they doubled their performance, they would still be at the bottom.

- Absolutely.

Wow.

- So black children in your district, they have a major problem with mathematics.

And then this translates into other things when they get older and their quality of living and their ability to buy a home and to build wealth, so on and so forth.

And so this is a huge problem that is bigger than just test scores.

- Right.

- And if you recognize that this has been a problem, I asked one time, what solutions have you proposed that have worked?

- Absolutely.

And that I think when you're in a public school and sometimes even a private school setting, the children who are, you know, not performing as well, they just have to run along with the pack and try their best to keep up.

And I think that a program like...

So is it operating as an after school program or is it operating as part of the daily curriculum?

How does that all work in a school setting?

- What they did, they did a really good job of doing a summer program with it.

- OK. - And then during the school year this second semester, they did it as a Saturday program for the students that were in it for the summer.

And I can tell you over the summer, this is how good the program was, the students enjoyed it.

They got started at 7:45.

I don't think they finished until 2.45, and they did mathematics for that whole time.

- Are you kidding me?

I'm grown, and I don't know that I could keep up with that thing.

It must be extremely engaging, informational, right, and interactive for the kids to want to participate.

What type of outcomes are you seeing for students that come through the program and how is it impacting their level of confidence?

Because one thing I do know about math is that you have to have confidence when you're going in there that you understand the theories and the theorems and everything else.

Without that confidence, you're not going to do well at math.

- Let me just say you gave one of the most insightful interviews ever, and this is because, I mean, you're really nailing it on the head.

Confidence was going to be the first thing that I said.

- OK, OK. - And so, so you gave my number one answer there.

That's the first thing because a lot of times, and you know this, people have, you know, math anxiety, right?

And if you don't believe that you can do something, many times, you don't even try.

- Right.

- And by default, you think that you're going to get it wrong.

- Mm hmm.

- So you're automatically cutting off your ability to do higher order mathematics.

But when you come in and you're strong and you're solid with your multiplication tables and you can square large numbers in your head and you can multiply multi digit numbers in your head, now you have this confidence, you're ready to try it, you're ready to be competitive.

So that's the first thing that we're seeing, and we're seeing this love of where they're going home and creating their own homework so that they can be ready for the next day.

Because it's not traditional school.

We're not heavy on assessment because that is not working.

If you look at the data, the more we're testing, the worse our students are doing.

- Wow, wow, that's amazing.

Go ahead.

No, you want to make another point?

- So what I do is the way that babies learn, you know, we just start talking to them.

They smell, they touch, they mess with, so on and so forth.

And so that's... What we don't give babies a test on their first ten English words, right?

- Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

- So it's the same thing.

We do not over assess children.

It's learning for the sake of learning.

And then the things that they really like, they're able to gravitate towards and then go further with it.

- Yeah.

What do you think this, where do you think this mindset came from within the black and brown community that you're not good at math?

I mean, I've heard it over and over and over again.

What do you think is the genesis or the origins of that type of rhetoric that happens within our community?

- Yeah, I mean, it all plays into the narrative that we aren't good enough, right?

- Yeah.

- And so as you spoke of with the history being erased or not even shared is that if we built the pyramids as you went over in your introduction, right?

- Mm hmm.

- Then we came over and were enslaved, of course, that is taken away.

And think about the names and what we're called - stupid boy.

- Mm hmm.

- Not being allowed to read, but also not being allowed to work with numbers.

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

- So it is amazing that we're able, you and I are even able to be in this position where we're so well educated, right?

- Right.

- And can do all of this other work because I don't think we can ever imagine what those days were like during slavery.

- No.

And it's so true.

And when you think about even the area of advanced mathematics, right?

I read somewhere that probably around 1 to 2% of mathematics PhDs are given or bestowed upon African-Americans.

And so we don't see ourselves in that space, so many times it's not something that we aspire to because it's not, it's not visual to us.

Can you kind of talk on that a little bit?

- Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's one of those, you know, if you can't see it, it's kind of hard to believe.

- Yeah.

- And it's funny, Dr Abdulalim Shabazz, he's no longer with us.

But when he was a mathematician, I think he started at Lincoln University first.

But at the time, he was responsible for those very few African-American PhDs.

He was responsible at the time for about 85% of it.

- Wow.

All coming out of Lincoln?

He had such a huge impact.

Black man.

- Right.

Black man, leader.

and he's this passing on this information and inspiring other students.

That's pretty amazing.

- And this doesn't just work for black people.

There was a study that showed that when girls have a woman professor in college, they tend to do much better in their STEM classes.

- Yeah.

- So this works for everyone.

- That's amazing.

- It's just that when you go to our neighborhoods and our schools, you have 70% white women that want our boys to act like little white girls.

And they're so full of energy and so curious... - Right.

- ...that they can't sit down in their chair.

We don't know how to keep them engaged so that they become doctors and scientists.

- Then they send them to the principal's office, right?

And so now we're over disciplined within schools, it's all statistically proven, right?

We end up in the principal's office.

We end up engaging with the police and it's a school to prison pipeline.

That's a whole nother show.

I'm sure we can get back and talk about that.

So how can folks access, we're coming to the close.

How can folks access your program?

And of course, we'll be doing it as a as a part of our church.

But can you talk a little bit about how folks can access the information?

And is it just for smaller children or does it run all the way K to 12?

- We actually had a woman out of the UK say she purchased it for her child and she was going into plumbing or something like that, and she started taking it.

- Nice.

So it's from, you know, whatever age group because it covers so many different topics, but basically BlackMathGenius.com.

And for the rest of this month, we only have about a week left in this month, they can get it for over 66% off, I think it's... Don't quote me on the price, but it's a steep discount right now.

- I need to get to my computer so I'm going to run off after this.

Go ahead.

- But they can go to BlackMathGenius.com.

- OK. - And get the program there.

And it's lifetime access, and it's a family thing because, you know, we're, I have this conversation with my team all the time about responsible capitalism.

- Yes.

- And so it's family access.

So if there are multiple children or mom and dad, everyone can use that one log-in information.

You don't have to buy one for every child or every person in the home.

- What about an organization such as mine?

Like I said, we're going to have 50 scholars on our campus this summer and then when we're done with the summer program in September, we're going to the coding program.

Is there like a license for a location?

Talk about that.

- Yes.

We have what's called a site license.

- OK. - And so that's what the district in West Virginia did.

They did a site license, I believe, of 100.

And so they're able to use those 100 to give out to whichever 100 families they want to use to program.

And that's at a discount for the school or the district or whatever the organization is that's ordering.

- Excellent.

Well, we've got about 30 seconds.

In 30 seconds, just give a message to the folks that are viewing today.

- Get your young people strong into mathematics and coding, the same way that you would invest in uniforms for them to play sports or, you know, designer shoes.

No other investment is going to be as great as mathematics and coding right now.

- Wow.

Well, let me say Assata, you're doing amazing work, and the uplift you're providing for our community is going to impact and affect generations.

Just helping a young child to be confident, to know their history and to approach mathematics in a way where they can be successful will change lives.

I'm already asking you now, I need you to come to my church and do something on cryptocurrency.

I've been looking for an experts, so I'll be reaching out on the side.

- Yes.

And I prefer to do it in person, that's even better.

- OK, OK, OK. - We should work something out.

- Well, I'd like to thank you for taking time to come on the program today.

It was very inspirational and informational.

- Thank you.

Yes.

- And to our viewing audience on behalf of everyone here at PBS39, I'm Pastor Phillip Davis.

Thanks for tuning in and may God bless you.

Until next time, keep being courageous.