White ignorance

Mills states that white ignorance denotes ‘[…] an ignorance among whites—an absence of belief, a false belief, a set of beliefs, a pervasively deforming outlook—that [is] not contingent but causally linked to the their whiteness. “Whiteness” here, of course, has no biological connotations, but is being used in the sense that has become standard within critical studies, to refer to people socially categorized as white within a racialized social system’ (Mills 2015).

For Mills, white ignorance is a social construct rather than a biological impediment. People of different colours can act or think in a manner that can be categorised as white ignorance, and it can also be used against people who, upon observation, can be described as white. He avers, ‘[t]o begin with, white ignorance as a cognitive phenomenon has to be clearly historicized. I am taking for granted the truth of some variant of social constructivism, which denies that race is biological. So the causality in the mechanisms for generating and sustaining white ignorance on the macro level is social-structural rather than physico-biological, though it will of course operate through the physico-biological’ (Mills 2007). He points out that even in the United States, during various periods, some European ethnic groups were not considered white and were victims of white ignorance.

Mills writes from a normative position: ‘I want a concept of white ignorance broad enough to include moral ignorance—not merely ignorance of facts with moral implications but moral non-knowings, incorrect judgments about the rights and wrongs of moral situations themselves […] the point of trying to understand white ignorance is, of course, normative and not merely sociological—hence the emphasis on the continuity with classic epistemology—the goal of trying to reduce or eliminate it’ (Mills 2007).

Sullivan and Tuana state that white ignorance is not accidental but, ‘[…] the ignorance of the racially privileged often is deliberately cultivated by them, an act made easier by a vast array of institutional systems supporting white people’s obliviousness of the worlds of people of color. […] Linked with white supremacy, white ignorance includes both false belief and the absence of true belief about people of color, supporting a delusion of white racial superiority that can afflict white and nonwhite people alike. White ignorance operates with a particular kind of social cognition that distorts reality. For example, the lens with which white people (and others suffering from white ignorance) perceive the world is shaped by white supremacy, causing them to mis-see whites as civilized superiors and nonwhites as inferior “savages”’ (Sullivan & Tuana 2007).

Moreover, they argue that, ‘[w]hite ignorance also impacts social and individual memory, erasing both the achievements of people of color and the atrocities of white people. A collective amnesia about the past is the result, which supports hostility toward the testimony and credibility of nonwhite people’ (Sullivan & Tuana 2007). An illustration of this, which still take places in relation to Puerto Rico, a US territory: ‘Why do I know so little about Puerto Rico? Because, seemingly, there is so little that is worth knowing: Puerto Ricans are a childlike, ignorant people, helplessly dependent upon the United States for any and all solutions to the island’s problems. This is to say that I know so little about Puerto Rico because I know so much about it: my ignorance of the island is formed out of complex structures of colonialist ignorance/knowledge that champion an asymmetrical and a nonreciprocal relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico. Because it (supposedly) possesses all of the power and knowledge vis-à-vis Puerto Rico, the United States (allegedly) gains nothing valuable or beneficial from the island—only economic headaches—and thus does not depend on Puerto Rico in the way that Puerto Rico depends on the United States. Given this purported lack of symmetry and reciprocity, no wonder that being knowledgeable about Puerto Rico seems pointless or trivial to many white United Staters’ (Sullivan 2007).

Another current example of white ignorance is found in education and children development. Dull, Rogers, and Ross have studied youth development in the US. In their research they learned that: ‘[…] white children's racial development is intertwined with white ignorance. That is, rather than assuming that white youth have no knowledge about racism and racial inequality, or have yet to learn about it, we instead uncovered how their construction of race—that was in large part a not knowing about racism—is a form of learning shepherded by white ignorance’ (Dull, Rogers & Ross 2025).

Amnesia can also be found in the realm of educational philosophy and the creation of conscience in a nation. Margonis addresses this in relation to the work of John Dewey, one of the greatest U.S. public intellectuals of the 20th century, and who by all accounts can be associated with the ideas behind progressive education. Margonis states: ‘[…] Dewey took vocal stands on countless public issues, yet he did not enter the extremely important early twentieth-century debate over the aggressiveness of U.S. foreign policy. […] Even though Dewey criticizes President Roosevelt for neglecting economic inequalities, he says nothing regarding Roosevelt’s racism, imperialism, or doctrine of manifest destiny. […] Dewey’s struggles in understanding U.S. foreign policy may well be traced to his participation in the white community’s epistemology of ignorance’ (Margonis 2007).

White ignorance has some similarities with colonial unknowing, as both concepts aim to actively obfuscate processes to redress colonisation and racism. Both are social constructs to maintain power over those who have—or continue to be— affected by racism or colonisation. Yet, while colonial unknowing encompasses issues related to race, it also extends to other concepts. In contrast, white ignorance is mainly concerned with matters of white supremacy.