You Will Not Take Us: A Counterstory

In this piece, we share our experiences as we navigate the whiteness of academia. Each of us has taken different pathways to get where we are today as gears within the academic machine. We wrote dangerously to aid our processes of unlearning and (re)learning to disrupt mechanisms of this cruel (white) apparatus. As counterstories do, we hope to be able to help others reflect and determine ways to act against an institution promoting assimilation and erasure of historically and contemporarily excluded populations. Our counterstory centers around the memories of a mathematics education doctoral student, Lily. Her story is presented in a back-and-forth between time periods and gives the reader an opportunity to have their own unique experience with the reading. Instead of a discussion and conclusion, we provide the reader the opportunity to stop or listen to our discussion, available online.