ABSTRACT
Although mathematical proficiency has been positioned and theorized as the preeminent goal for mathematics education, there have been few critical appraisals of it. Larnell analyzes the strands of mathematical proficiency “through a lens darkly” by drawing on tenets of CRT to argue: mathematical proficiency is a racialized-majoritarian inscription device, mathematical proficiency represents intellectual property that is mediated contemporarily by a restrictive form of procedural fluency—with race-contingent consequences, and mathematical proficiency aims to produce learners who see mathematics as disconnected from their racialized realities and are habitually conditioned to use mathematics in prescribed and routine ways.
