WhIte IgNoRaNce ( 71 )reciprocally determining one another, jointly contributing to the blindness
of the white eye.
In his wonderfully titled States of Denial, Stanley Cohen argues that
“whole societies may slip into collective modes of denial”:
Besides collective denials of the past (such as brutalities against indigenous peoples),
people may be encouraged to act as if they don’t know about the present. Whole soci-
eties are based on forms of cruelty, discrimination, repression or exclusion which are
“known” about but never openly acknowledged.... Indeed, distortions and self-
delusions are most often synchronized.... Whole societies have mentioned and
unmentionable rules about what should not be openly talked about. You are subject to
a rule about obeying these rules, but bound also by a meta- rule which dictates that you
deny your knowledge of the original rule.^75White ignorance has been able to flourish all these years because a white
epistemology of ignorance has safeguarded it against the dangers of an illu-
minating blackness or redness, protecting those who for “racial” reasons
have needed not to know. Only by starting to break these rules and meta-
rules can we begin the long process that will lead to the eventual overcom-
ing of this white darkness and the achievement of an enlightenment that is
genuinely multiracial.