Remember when two plus two equaled four? Those were simpler times.

Now apparently basic arithmetic is just another tool of white supremacy that needs to be dismantled, reimagined, and served with a side of social justice.

A math curriculum continually being pushed in Seattle public schools is not merely teaching kids how to solve for x, but is teaching them that math itself is an oppressive construct designed to perpetuate racial inequity.

The equitable math framework, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, argues that focusing on getting the “right answer” and requiring students to “show their work” are actually manifestations of white supremacy culture.

When feelings care about facts.

The curriculum materials claim that “the concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false” and that “upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.”

This is not only happening in Seattle. From California to Virginia, math education is being “decolonized” faster than you can calculate the slope of a line.

The Oregon Department of Education promoted a workshop for teachers that claimed finding the right answer in math “perpetuates white supremacy culture,” because apparently expecting correct answers is now racist.

Is gravity discriminatory because it affects everyone equally? Is the periodic table just another tool of the patriarchy?

Apparently reality is racist.

While progressive educators are busy turning multiplication tables into oppression matrices, American students continue falling behind internationally in math proficiency.

China is not teaching kids that algebra is colonialist. Russia is not concerned about whether calculus respects indigenous ways of knowing.

But at least our kids will graduate with a deep understanding of how the quadratic formula perpetuates systems of power, even if they cannot actually solve the equation.

The saddest part is that the children who will suffer most from this mathematical malpractice are the same minority students these educators claim to champion. Turns out the soft bigotry of low expectations comes dressed in progressive clothing.

Math does not care about your identity or your lived experience, because two plus two equals four. That is not white supremacy. That is reality, and reality, unlike these curriculum designers, does not grade on a curve.