Mills’s account of white ignorance: Structural or non-structural?

Bain, Zara 2023. Mills’s account of white ignorance: Structural or non-structural? Theory and Research in Education 21 (1) , pp. 18-32. 10.1177/14778785231162779

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Abstract

Recent philosophical secondary literature on white ignorance – a concept most famously developed by the late philosopher Charles W. Mills – suggests that white ignorance is, one way or another, a non-structural phenomenon. I analyse two such readings, the agential view and the cognitivist view. I argue that they misinterpret Mills’ work by (among other things) committing a kind of structural erasure, and one which implies that Mills’ account cannot capture, for example, cases where white ignorance (and white racial domination) involves historical erasure, especially when perpetrated by sociopolitical institutions. This is particularly salient in cases such as the recent movement against anti-racist education, now widely conflated with critical race theory, in the United States and United Kingdom, which I offer as a brief case study.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Additional Information:	License information from Publisher: LICENSE 1: URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/, Start Date: 2023-03-23
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
ISSN:	1477-8785
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	6 April 2023
Last Modified:	05 May 2023 16:47
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/158461

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