No, Gates Foundation didn't call math lessons 'racist' | Fact check

Joedy McCreary, USA TODAY
·3 min read
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

The claim: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said math lessons are 'racist'

An April 10 Facebook video (direct link, archive link) shows musician Tom MacDonald claiming that a philanthropic organization has a problem with the way kids are taught math.

“So the Gates Foundation has determined that math lessons are racist,” MacDonald begins by saying. “Are we teaching kids that two plus two equals the N-word now?”

It was shared more than 3,000 times in two weeks.

More from the Fact-Check Team: How we pick and research claims | Email newsletter | Facebook page

Our rating: False

The Gates Foundation didn’t say that, according to a spokesperson. The post is referencing a 2021 document that aims to eliminate racial biases in math instruction. It was published by an organization that received funding from the foundation.

Gates Foundation issues no statement on racism in math instruction

The Gates Foundation did not make the determination attributed to it, one of its leaders told USA TODAY.

“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has never said, nor do we believe, that math is racist,” Allan Golston, the president of the foundation’s U.S. program, said in an email.

Fact check: Proposal would not eliminate advanced math classes in Virginia

MacDonald is a rapper who performed a song with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro and charted the 2021 single “Fake Woke” on the Billboard Top 100.

In a response to USA TODAY, MacDonald cited as evidence for the claim an April 9 article published by the Capital Research Center under the headline "Math Lessons Are Racist, as per the Gates Foundation." At one point in the video, a screenshot of the headline is shown.

The Capital Research Center, a think tank that promotes small-government views and has been critical of public education, criticizes a 2021 handbook published by the nonprofit Education Trust-West and distributed to teachers in California. The article claims the Gates Foundation, which provided funding for the project, is pushing to label most math instruction as white supremacist.

Mariel Matze, a spokesperson for the Education Trust-West, disputed the characterization of the report in the article and MacDonald's post.

The report “absolutely does not say that math is racist,” she told USA TODAY in an email.

The report – the first in a series of five sections it calls "strides" – states its purpose is to help educators recognize how their previous experiences and personal biases may shape how they teach the subject. It's titled, "Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction."

The report states on its opening page that it contains exercises for teachers “to reflect on their own biases." It later states, "White supremacy culture infiltrates math classrooms in everyday teacher actions. Coupled with the beliefs that underlie these actions, they perpetuate educational harm on Black, Latinx and multilingual students, denying them full access to the world of mathematics."

The Gates family and the foundation have been frequent subjects of misinformation on social media. USA TODAY has debunked false claims that the foundation provides 88% of funding for the World Health Organization, that a social media post from Bill Gates referenced vaccines in the food supply and that he wrote an article arguing for depopulation through forced vaccination.

USA TODAY reached out to the author of the article but did not immediately receive a response.

Our fact-check sources:

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or e-newspaper here.

USA TODAY is a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network, which requires a demonstrated commitment to nonpartisanship, fairness and transparency. Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Meta.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Bill Gates' foundation didn't call math lessons 'racist' | Fact check