White Ignorance in Global Education

Abstract

In this qualitative research essay, Francine Menashy and Zeena Zakharia advance Charles Mills’s concept of White ignorance for understanding racial power hierarchies in global education governance. They reveal how global education organizations “sanitize racial inequities and silence conversations on race” and how in global education racism has been largely considered a US-based problem, which denies the fact that White supremacy is a global system. The authors argue that White ignorance has inhibited structural change in global education policies and practices. And while the Black Lives Matter movement has called for a global reckoning with entrenched racism and White supremacy, limited attention has been paid to racial inequities in global education circles.