White Ignorance and the Coronavirus
The Republican response to COVID-19 is rooted in white ignorance
A recent poll shows Democrats and Republicans divided over coronavirus.
Democrats are twice as likely as Republicans to “believe coronavirus poses an imminent threat to the United States, and more Democrats than Republicans were taking steps to be prepared, including washing their hands more often or limiting their travel plans.” Experts blame political polarization and where people consume media for the divergent views. It's a fair point, but it's a colorblind one.
White ignorance explains the different beliefs. Race divides the political parties, and Americans see and treat Republicans as white and Democrats as Black. Elections have consequences and causes: whites elected Trump for whiteness. If you look at what his supporters believe, it’s clear that white ignorance is stronger among his supporters.
Charles Mills, a philosopher, has a chapter on white ignorance in the book Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, edited by Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana. White ignorance is a “group-based cognitive handicap,” a “cognitive tendency,” and a “privileged, group-based ignorance” that comes from white identity.
According to Mills, “race—white racism and/or white racial domination and their ramifications—plays a crucial causal role” in white ignorance. But Mills says white ignorance isn’t uniform across whites or even limited to whites.
White ignorance is “mistaken belief, false belief, and an absence of true belief” about whites, Black people, and people of color caused by white identity. This “ignorance” isn’t an oversight or a mistake. It’s a “deliberate effort,” and it includes “the spread of misinformation,” “the distribution of error,” and “moral ignorance” caused by white identity.
The contagion of white ignorance from white identity is deadly.
Mills says “white group interests” and the “social suppression of pertinent knowledge and facts” produce white ignorance. This is the ignorance of “alternative facts.” According to Sullivan and Tuana, this ignorance supports white privilege, white supremacy, domination, and exploitation. Ignorance is power.
White ignorance about coronavirus is stronger in the Republican Party because white identity is stronger in the Republican Party. The party sees Trump as a fighter for “white group interests” and Democrats and mainstream media are the non-white enemies of the white state.
Whether Trump spreads misinformation out of authoritarianism, incompetence, insecurity, narcissism, political survival or some personality disorder—it doesn't matter. Power is his motive. He does what he does for white dominance. Trump’s response to the pandemic protects Trump. And whatever protects Trump protects whiteness. Trump’s response to the coronavirus is no different.
His supporters are unbothered by his dangerous lies, racism, and inconsistencies. For the dominance of whiteness represented in Trump, they believe conspiracy theories and downplay the virus. White ignorance from the top and all around has increased anti-Asian hate crimes and discrimination.
The contagion of white ignorance from white identity is deadly. In his essay, “On Being White and Other Lies,” James Baldwin writes about people who bring “humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white.” Humanity has never left that edge; it remains on edge.