Privileged ignorance

“Thoroughgoing ignorance about the ways of others is largely a privilege of the powerful.”

– Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, p. xviii.

2 thoughts on “Privileged ignorance”

  1. An alternate way of thinking the same thought, is that knowing about the powerful is a survival skill, whereas knowing about anybody else is harder to do and has less of an economic- or social-status payoff. Most important, I think, from the point of view of an interested seeker, is that there tends to be only one or two power cultures at the top, but tens of thousands of other cultures. I know a little about the Latino culture of Los Angeles, the Samish Indians near me now, and about Norway. That’s not even the tip of the iceberg.

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