White Ignorance: The Social Danger of Refusing Reality

By Charles Lindquist

Charles Lindquist is a journalism student at the University of Oregon in Eugene, OR.

White Ignorance: the social danger of refusing reality

Ignorance: lack of knowledge, including unintentionally or deliberately disregarding important information or facts.          

In his 2017 book, Black Rights/White Wrongs, Charles Mills introduced the idea of white ignorance. Mills defined white ignorance as “an ignorance, a non-knowing, that is not contingent, but in which race—white racism and/or white racial domination and their ramification—plays a crucial causal role” (55). This means that white ignorance is when individuals actively choose to resist acknowledging racial history and relations; white ignorance is self-perpetuating by never opening itself to examination.  

            James Baldwin struck on the idea of white ignorance in his 1962 letter, My Dungeon Shook. In Baldwin’s letter to his nephew he wrote, “And I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it” (5). Baldwin expressed that the crime that these countrymen have committed will never be forgiven, and will come back and reveal itself to them once they stop fighting its existence. The crime that this group has committed falls under the definition of white ignorance. Those countrymen actively fought to be ignorant of the existence of the pain and destruction that they have brought to people in the creation of this country, the United States of America. 

            To this day white ignorance has been upheld, casually or intentionally. Kristie Dotson shared on the Elucidations podcast an experience that Patricia Williams, an African American legal scholar, hadwith white ignorance. Within the podcast, Dotson said that Williams went to a store that was open; when Williams tried to enter the store, she was told by the white cashier that they were closed. However, this seemingly racist rebuff by the cashier was not the instance of white ignorance that Williams faced, which came later in the responses she received when sharing this instance of racism. When Williams would tell white people about this experience and her interpretation of it, they would claim that it was not racism or had not been a result of William’s race. Instead, they would give a plethora of excuses or alternatives of what the exchange could have been instead. White ignorance was the denial that Williams’ lived experience was because of race or racism; the central aspect of white ignorance is epistemic oppression. These people were more comfortable dismissing the possibility of racism, rather allowing Williams to express her feelings. When the problem of racism is not confronted and its existence actively denied, that is when white ignorance occurs. The people that Williams talked to about her instance of racism were choosing to prevent progress in fighting racism and were actively participating in white ignorance. Instead of listening to Williams, they told her she was wrong; she had misinterpreted the situation (even though it was her experience, not their’s). 

            The example given within the Elucidations podcast is a straightforward example of white ignorance; it is one to one with the definition that Mills gave. It is easy to give these people the benefit of the doubt and not ascribe the blatant, intentional defense of racism. As such, they were ignorant, not by chance, but made the decision to be ignorant of racism, they casually chose to continue to be ignorant, inventing alternatives rather than accepting Williams’ experience; they were causally ignorant. 

            Baldwin wrote about the undermining of lived experience and when racism is actively denied existence. Baldwin said, “I know what the world has done to my brother and how he has narrowly survived it” (5). Here Baldwin said that his brother narrowly survived the system in which white ignorance forced him to live, Baldwin provided evidence to this when he said, “They [countrymen] do not know Harlem, and I do. So do you” (8). These countrymen have never lived what they forced Baldwin and his family to live through, entirely because of the color of their skin. Baldwin believed that it was “the innocence which constitutes the crime” by which Baldwin meant that white ignorance is committed by playing/acting innocent, of the racism does not exist, or even potentially exists, around them, which only allows the further existence of racism (6). Baldwin had knowledge about racism and how things actually were in the U.S., of which the white dominant society remains ignorant, because of his standpoint epistemology. This ignorance that the white dominant society of the U.S. has allowed the U.S. to maintain their alleged (pretended) innocence. 

            Throughout Baldwin’s letter, the overarching topic is white ignorance and the devaluation of Baldwin’s standpoint epistemology. Baldwin tied white ignorance to systemic oppression within America. And said that he was told that he was exaggerating when he would tell white Americans about his lived experience. Baldwin stated, “This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish” (7). Baldwin was writing about how the United States, as a country and system, placed Baldwin’s nephew and Americans of African descent into systems and locations where they could not have or were restricted from full access to the same quality of resources that white Americans have. 

White ignorance denied the existence of Baldwin’s lived experience and his standpoint epistemology. White ignorance chose to fight his standpoint epistemology through denial, which effectively rendered his existence worthless, as he was unable to share his experiences without being dismissed and told that he was exaggerating. Baldwin expressed how he had been systemically oppressed and how he would continue to be systemically oppressed when he said, “You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being” (7). Systemic oppression has been allowed to exist, and will continue to be allowed to, by white ignorance. 

White ignorance claims innocence from any systemic oppression, so according to white ignorance, there is not a problem with systemic oppression since white ignorance believes it isn’t real. This belief that systemic oppression isn’t real has denied Mills, Baldwin, Dotson, and Williams their lived existence. 

The premise of white ignorance is that racism doesn’t exist because the white majority claim it doesn’t exist. This is claim is supported by the refusal to openly discuss real or even potential racism. The danger of white ignorance is the belief that saying something makes it true contrary to facts and experience. 

#          #          #