After a closer read, I like this paper much less than I did after a quick skim. The primary reason for this: Martín seriously misrepresents Mills’ account of white ignorance.
@TLNewmanMTL asks: what’s Martín’s justification for using “white ignorance” in the first place? 1/
@TLNewmanMTL asks: what’s Martín’s justification for using “white ignorance” in the first place? 1/
https://twitter.com/deonteleologist/status/1368954501240033282
Mills’ original (2007) definition of white ignorance: “an ignorance, a non-knowing, that is not contingent, but in which race—white racism and/or white racial domination and their ramifications—plays a crucial causal role.”
Here is Martín’s first crack at it: 2/
Here is Martín’s first crack at it: 2/
@TLNewmanMTL correctly points out that, in introducing the notion of white ignorance, Martín relies on this study pnas.org/content/early/… but only cites one figure from it—one which is actually race-neutral (fn. 2) 3/
Both Mills and Martín acknowledge that calling ignorance an instance of ‘white ignorance’ commits one to a claim of racial causal influence. But suppose you’re like @TLNewmanMTL and you want evidence that white ignorance actually exists.
Martín says she can’t help you here. 4/
Martín says she can’t help you here. 4/
That doesn’t itself refute Martín in any way; philosophers often have to make these sorts of moves. But it is understandably frustrating, given that her intro seems to be intended as establishing the sort of empirical basis necessary to vindicate the notion of white ignorance.
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