Two Varieties of White Ignorance. Yaure, P. Journal of Politics, 86(3):920–933, 2024.
doi  abstract   bibtex   
The concept of white ignorance refers to phenomena of not-knowing that are produced by and reinforce systems of white supremacist domination and exploitation. I distinguish two varieties of white ignorance, belief-based white ignorance and practice-based white ignorance. Belief-based white ignorance consists in an information deficit about systems of racist oppression. Practice-based white ignorance consists in unresponsiveness to the political agency of persons and groups subject to racist oppression. Drawing on the antebellum political thought of Black abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, I contend that an antiracist politics that conceives of its epistemic task in terms of combating practice-based white ignorance offers a more promising frame for liberatory struggle. A focus on practice-based white ignorance calls for a distinctive form of humility that involves recognition of the limits of one’s own political agency in relation to others, which is integral to democratic relations between free, equal, yet mutually dependent persons. © 2024 Southern Political Science Association.
@article{yaure_two_2024,
	title = {Two {Varieties} of {White} {Ignorance}},
	volume = {86},
	doi = {10.1086/729937},
	abstract = {The concept of white ignorance refers to phenomena of not-knowing that are produced by and reinforce systems of white supremacist domination and exploitation. I distinguish two varieties of white ignorance, belief-based white ignorance and practice-based white ignorance. Belief-based white ignorance consists in an information deficit about systems of racist oppression. Practice-based white ignorance consists in unresponsiveness to the political agency of persons and groups subject to racist oppression. Drawing on the antebellum political thought of Black abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, I contend that an antiracist politics that conceives of its epistemic task in terms of combating practice-based white ignorance offers a more promising frame for liberatory struggle. A focus on practice-based white ignorance calls for a distinctive form of humility that involves recognition of the limits of one’s own political agency in relation to others, which is integral to democratic relations between free, equal, yet mutually dependent persons. © 2024 Southern Political Science Association.},
	number = {3},
	journal = {Journal of Politics},
	author = {Yaure, P.},
	year = {2024},
	keywords = {Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, democratic theory, humility, white ignorance},
	pages = {920--933},
}

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