AMS leads the way

The American Mathematical Society has gotten a few mentions here before: it got an implicit cheer from us for publishing Abigail Thompson’s letter*, as well as some rotten tomatoes for giving da functor a blog and disgracefully debasing itself with #ShutDownMath.

A while back, AMS had issued a new “Fellowship for a Black Mathematician”:

Needless to say, we’re opposed to race-specific fellowships, and found the above deeply offensive (not to mention potentially illegal). Still, the times being what they are, one can only get outraged about such things so many times — especially when much more potent irritants are rubbed in your face daily. Our curiosity was piqued, however, when an apology followed on the heels of that announcement:

Without reading further, gentle reader, can you figure out what exactly AMS is apologizing for? What was it in the previous announcement that had “demonstrated insensitivity and caused hurt and anger”?

This twitter thread offers a clue. In particular,

In other words, what has enraged the woke mob is not the fact of the blatant racial discrimination, but rather the plain admission of that fact! “Unwilling to name whiteness” translates to: all of the other fellowships are reserved for whites (nevermind that this is not true, I’m just translating). “Naming Blackness” translates to: admitting in plain text that this fellowship is for blacks only. I guess the woke way to square this circle would be to name the fellowship after a “notable Black mathematician” (um… Blackwell? We predict this once-in-a-century prodigy will be finding his name on a lot of awards) and only award it to blacks, of course — but somehow not admit to the racial discrimination anywhere in writing.

*Just checked — it’s still up. Boy did that one cause a shit-storm.