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Moral ignorance (“colonialism was not that bad”) is often sustained by factual ignorance (ignorance of what colonialism *actually involved*), but there are interesting cases where moral knowledge seems sustained by factual ignorance.
Take this YouGov survey on attitudes to British Empire: 32% of British people think Empure pride-worthy; only 23% of Scottish people do.
The samples are small but let’s run with the contrast.
Why does it exist? Are Scottish people just morally better and more insightful than British people as a whole? No way.
Demographics are probably not driving this difference either, as they likely *are* in London where circa 40% of the population is BAME. In Scotland that proportion is 4%!
What *is* special about Scotland is that there is deep and widespread ignorance about quite how deeply involved Scots and Scotland were in the British imperial project. There’s no feeling of complicity. This ignorance facilitates a clearer eyed judgement of Empire’s morality.
Hence: moral insight is being sustained by his topical ignorance.
