white ignorance
đź“– Definitions
Systemic and socially constructed form of ignorance that sustains white supremacy by distorting, denying, or ignoring racial realities, highlighting how dominant racial groups often remain unaware—intentionally or unintentionally—of the injustices and experiences of marginalized groups, thereby maintaining racial inequality.
đź’ˇ Examples
- "Fricker argues that white ignorance often functions as the source of epistemic injustices, but not of distinctively hermeneutical injustices, since it typically concerns “a dysfunction at the level of belief and evidence rather than the level of conceptual repertoire and intelligibility” (Fricker, 2016, p. 173). However, she acknowledges that there can be cases of white ignorance (“albeit non-standard”) that include “the suppression of concepts” and result in “a genuine deficit in hermeneutical resources for the white community” (Fricker, 2016, p. 174)" (as cited by Medina 2017, p. 44).
NB: Fricker objects against using white ignorance as an agentially produced form of hermeneutical injustice, but Medina (with Pohlhaus's willful herm injustice in the background) thinks it does (see Medina, 2017, p. 45)
đź”— Relations
- produces: hermeneutical injustice
đź“š References
- Mills, Charles. 2007. “White Ignorance.” In Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, edited by Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana. State University of New York Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/163/monograph/chapter/121151.