Help with this short answer?

Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson once commented, “Somehow it's OK for people to Chuckle about not being good at math. Yet if I said, ‘I never learned to read,’ they’d say I was an illiterate dolt.” He was referring to the notion that it has become socially acceptable for people to say they are bad at math, but is it is unacceptable to say they are bad at reading.

How do you respond to this? Should society think it’s OK for people to say they’re bad at math?

The set of statements that Neil made he might have tried to indicate that mathematics is no less than reading itself. Math is a beautiful language and he is trying to advocate that like people compel on reading, people should also compel learning mathematics up to a certain extent. People should try to discover the beauty of mathematics.

When people in general say that they are bad at mathematics they might mean they are not good at basic math or they might also mean that they are not good in advance mathematics. Since the field of advance mathematics or applied mathematics does not come in to play in the common life therefore, people in general think that is it okay to say that they are bad at math.

For an instance advance math which is behind the design of jet engine, plane engine, math behind the architecture of a building is hidden from the vision of common people and neither they are interested. So I believe for them it is okay to say that they are bad at math.

But if one is curious to learn and apply mathematics, then it certainly is not okay to say that he/she is bad at math.