White Concealment

There is a significant body of literature that explores epistemic injustice as ignorance. Most germane to the present essay are explorations of white ignorance—particularly at the intersection of epistemic interdependence and relationality—and its necessity in the maintenance of white supremacy. Most conceptual discussions of white ignorance are concerned with what white people refuse to know, and the implications of that unknowing on nonwhite peoples. In this essay, I consider what white people refuse to say—how they story situations or renarrate as a process by which to sustain power. What information are white people willing to recognize but simultaneously unwilling to allow to be acknowledged in the context of a specific racist situation? How do white people use the feigned absence or irrelevance of information—concealment—as power?