Abstract

At the start of the #metoo protests, many men professed genuine surprise about the prevalence of sexual harassment, whilst many women could not figure out how men could have been so ignorant. Black people have long observed that a similar apparent commitment to ignorance about race is widespread among whites. In a blog post originally written in 2004, the British journalist, Reni EddoLodge, reported that she had given up talking about race to white people because the majority simply refuse to accept the reality of structural racism. She notes that when she speaks, she can see that “their eyes shut down and harden. It’s like treacle is poured into their ears, blocking up their ear canals” (Eddo-Lodge, 2017, p. ix). This chapter offers a vice-epistemological account of the ignorance of those who are invested in not knowing, with a special focus on white ignorance, understood as a kind of racial insensitivity. I have two main aims. The first is to show that some forms of ignorance are the product of epistemic vices, conceived as sensibilities. The second is to explain the mutually re-enforcing connection that exists between arrogance, ignorance, and privilege. The chapter consists of three sections: the first offers a definition of active ignorance. The second provides an account of one epistemically vicious sensibility – racial insensitivity. The third section illustrates how arrogance feeds on privilege, produces ignorance, and widens inequalities that entrench privilege.