Ignorance as a Constructive Force: Selective Cognition and the Maintenance of Racial Ideology

ABSTRACT In this work I consider how ignorance, rather than being a mere absence or “not yet” state of knowledge, can be observed as a constructive, productive force in its own right, particularly in the maintenance of dominant racial ideologies that rely on certain facts not being known or even “knowable.” Drawing on conception of White ignorance , tenets of racial ignorance , and other works on strategic and intentional ignorance, I apply ignorance as a constructive, meaning‐providing force to both previous sociological works and more recent institutional acts to examine how ignorance—as the functional twin of “active” or “positive” racism—upholds racial ideologies that justify hierarchies of inequality and domination. From White misestimations of the racial wealth gap and older White individuals' false recollections of their actions during the Civil Rights Era, to more recent institutional acts including state legislation in Florida, presidential executive orders intended to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory and other “divisive concepts,” and disparate history textbooks in California and Texas, I observe how ignorance acts as an agentic force that works to uphold both individualized, internal beliefs in White goodness and morality, and racialized power structures at a broad scale. Through a consideration and re‐reading of a variety of works through a lens of active racial ignorance, I argue for the foundational role that ignorance, and the concerted absence of true knowledge, plays in establishing and maintaining not just individual, affective, and internalized conceptions of White racialization, but also institutionalized and systemic expressions of hegemonic racial ideologies.