I hesitated to tweet a thread like this because I'm always looking for more perfect words, but. In the words of @xl772, I am called out and called in.

I'm a white mathematician. When math societies get it wrong, it's partly because they're afraid of alienating people like me.

When I don't push back, they think they're right. Whether or not I'm a member, I look like one. (FWIW, I'm not an AMS member -- I didn't renew in 2020.)

Whether or not I'm a member of a math society, I am a member of a math department. I am responsible for my classrooms. I am visibly a face of mathematics.

I'm sorry for my complicity. I'm also deeply sorry that I can still think of math as goofy and fun when others are crushed by the weight of the community's disregard.

It's MLK day, a day that I'll spend quietly working on behalf of my students and colleagues who aren't white. And a day that I'll spend reckoning with my role in the status quo. (Not the only day, but a day with very clear intention to the exclusion of all other work.)

What does that look like? Listening, but also acting. Adding liberatory pedagogy to more of my spring classes. Developing my ethics section of a math class that focuses on math in society. Attending a bystander training specifc to my campus. Looking my failures straight on.

I'm not looking for a pat on the head here. I'm sharing in case it gives other white mathematicians ideas for ways to work in their own local sphere of influence.

I know my Black colleagues are hurtng right now, and I share the responsibility for making math a place where they don't hurt. I take that responsibility seriously, and I'm listening when you tell me your experience. I'm genuinely grateful that you trust me to share it with me.

And I'm sorry that yet again the burden falls to you to educate mathematicians like me.

I know this isn't a perfect thread, but I offer it up now, with my flaws poking out all akimbo, rather than join a deafening silence.