No abstract

Many white Americans are ignorant of the extent to which racism persists in American society. They believe that the average black family has 80% of the wealth of the average white family, when in fact the figure is 7% and shrinking (US Census, 2014; Kraus et al. 2017). They believe that black and brown youths buy, sell, and use drugs at a higher rate than white youths, proportionate to their higher incarcerate rate, when in fact youths of all races buy, sell, and use drugs at roughly the same rate, and the disproportionate incarceration of black and brown youths owes to biases in legislation, policing, and sentencing (Fellner 2014). And they believe that job candidates of color are hired more than white job candidates, when in fact candidates of color are interviewed at a much lower rate than their equally qualified white counterparts (Quillian et al. 2017). White Americans are ignorant of the persistence of individual and institutional racism, despite there being overwhelming evidence of it-evidence that is as accessible and understandable as the facts just presented. 1 Following Charles Mills, we call this ignorance "white ignorance" (Mills 1997; Mills 2007). White ignorance is double ignorance. White Americans are not only ignorant of racism, but they are also ignorant of their own ignorance. They don't know that they don't know. As James Baldwin puts it: [T]his is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. (Baldwin 1993, 5; emphasis added) Elizabeth Spelman (2007) argues that white Americans are doubly ignorant of racism because they do not want to even consider the proposition that racism persists. Better not to think about it at all than to reckon with the truth. White ignorance is also motivated ignorance. White Americans remain ignorant of the persistence of racism because this ignorance serves their psychological and material interests:

The dominant view in the philosophical literature contends that internalized oppression, especially that experienced in virtue of one's womanhood, reduces one's sense of agency. Here, I extend these arguments and suggest a more nuanced account. In particular, I argue that internalized oppression can cause a person to conceive of herself as a deviant agent as well as a reduced one. This self‐conception is also damaging to one's moral identity and creates challenges that are not captured by merely analyzing a reduced sense of agency. To help illustrate this claim, I consider experiences of people of color who internalize stereotypes regarding criminality and moral deviance. With these examples in mind, I show that internalized prejudices regarding criminality can cause people of color (men and women) to view themselves as outlaws in the moral community, that is, as wrongdoers. This conclusion helps give voice to some of the challenges that women of color who experience multiple sorts of internalized prejudices often face. To conclude, I discuss one strategy for empowerment that women of color have used when confronted with multiple forms of internalized oppression.

What responsibilities do individuals have when it comes to combating large‐scale public health crises such as racism? A seductive argument borrowed from the climate ethics literature suggests that focusing on individual morality for a structural problem such as racism is at best unhelpful and at worst actively harmful. In response, we argue that individuals have good moral reasons to modify their own behaviors to help in the fight against large, structural public health emergencies in general, and that the public health crisis of racism, in particular, demands heightened moral responsiveness from individual white people to resist white supremacy. The moral reasons that support white engagement in antiracist work extend above and beyond those regarding individual involvement in the fight against other collectively created public health challenges. Our conclusions help to defend the claim that racial literacy and antiracist education aimed at individuals are vital.

Understanding and empathy on the part of those in privileged positions are often cited as powerful tools in the fight against oppression. Too often, however, those in positions of power assume they know what it is like to be less well off when, in actuality, they do not. This kind of assumption represents a thinking vice we dub synecdoche epistemic arrogance. In instances of synecdoche epistemic arrogance, a person who has privilege wrongly assumes, based on limited experiences, that she can know what it is like to experience a particular form of oppression. We argue two main points. First, synecdoche epistemic arrogance can lead to a variety of moral harms. Second, synecdoche epistemic arrogance is often tied to other troubling epistemic patterns, which we discuss in the context of disability and race simulations. Overall, the essay helps demonstrate how synecdoche epistemic arrogance can contribute to injustice.