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ERIC Number: EJ1469433
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-May
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0009-3920
EISSN: EISSN-1467-8624
Available Date: 2025-01-23
Learning (Not) to Know: Examining How White Ignorance Manifests and Functions in White Adolescents' Racial Identity Narratives
Child Development, v96 n3 p1000-1016 2025
In critical approaches to the study of whiteness, white ignorance refers to systematic and intentional ways of (not) knowing that function to perpetuate racism. The current critical qualitative analysis examines how white ignorance surfaces in the racial identity narratives of white adolescents (N = 69, M[subscript age] = 15.91, SD = 0.49, data collected 2017-2019). Using semi-structured interview data, we identified three manifestations of accommodation to white ignorance: "constructing white as disadvantaged," "framing race(ism) as unimportant and elsewhere," and "the active refusal to know or imagine racial oppression." Alongside this accommodation we also observed a less common but important thread of resistance to white ignorance: "seeing (and naming) systemic racism." The findings reveal how white ignorance as a macrosystemic cultural practice becomes embedded in, and strengthened through, the micro-level racial identities of white adolescents. Implications for conceptualizing and contextualizing white racial identity in developmental science are discussed.
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www-wiley-com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: R01HL122328
Author Affiliations: 1Department of Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA; 2Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA