Plus “math skills” is one of those areas where stereotypes and self-fulfilling prophesies have incredibly influential power.
Math is difficult for everyone, and emotional factors like, “having the confidence of yourself and your peers” are important in making it through difficulty.
Hmm… so an approach that would have gotten Rodeo’s point across better might have been to say,
Because democracy is such a broad word that it is occasionally applied to the United States, despite the CIA’s history of coups and the FBI’s history of extrajudicial assassinations of citizens.