Strategic Ignorance
Welcome to the Explainer Section of our website! Here, you’ll find a collection of short and engaging explanations designed to help people with disabilities reduce the emotional labor of self-advocacy.
What Is It?
Strategic Ignorance is the tendency rooted in self-interest, or self-preservation, for people in positions of authority to opt-into having asymmetrical (lower quality) information about situations their privilege allows them to shape. This taste for misinformation largely removes the motivation to act in a way which benefits others (McGoey 2012).
- It tends to discourage accountability and personal responsibility, or it would otherwise burden them with guilt of their privilege or motivate them to use their privilege differently.
- Strategic ignorance need not be necessarily intentional.
“That Does Not Sound Very Strategic”
We choose ignorance because the inefficient outcome from having missing and substantively relevant information benefits us.
- We can shield ourselves from the guilt of direct consequences by using ignorance to call them unintended consequences.
- When marginalized individuals learn of the situation and respond in outrage, we can choose to focus on criticizing their emotional response rather than the systemic dynamic we created.
- We can use our privilege to recount the story of the conflict to others in a manner which
- … appeals to dominant powers.
- … ruins the vulnerable person’s reputation.
- … and strips their ability to define their story.
Consequences
- Our unwillingness to be informed can negatively affect assets in our organization, undermining resources invested in inclusion efforts and recruitment.
- Expose vulnerable members of our community to harm.
- Experience unnecessary conflict due to miscommunication.
- Stall and destabilize organizational relationships and initiatives.
Strategic ignorance leads to problem solving efforts that treat the symptom of poor management and communication, rather than the problem.