How does the author highlight public ignorance in this novel?

Through its use of satire, the novel points out again and again how ignorant the majority of people are when it comes to telling truth from lies and when it comes to thinking for oneself. When Matthew is preparing to give his first speech in front of the members of the Knights of Nordica, for example, he realizes that they are not so different from the people he has seen at black church gatherings. This comforts him, but it is ironic that the one similarity Matthew sees between whites and blacks is their stupidity and their willingness to believe whatever they are told. In a novel about a society divided by race, it is not a compliment that the one uniting factor is ignorance.

Elsewhere in the novel, Rev. Givens gives an hour-long speech on national radio and manages to exclusively tell lies. It would seem that this would elicit complaints from listeners, but instead, the radio station receives positive publicity and support, indicating that people even enjoy complete nonsense. Rev. Givens was specifically speaking about why Black-No-More should be closed, and because his radio broadcast achieved so much attention, President Goosie establishes a commission to look into the Black-No-More matter. The commission investigates and publishes a report, and only nine people in the United States read it. What was such an important and politicized issue for so many people is, just two months later, unimportant or at least not worth reading about. This indicates the fickleness of the public and also that perhaps the issue was never that important to people. Rather, it was a popular stance to take.

There are many more instances of the general public's ignorance throughout the novel, and satire and irony are particularly effective tools for revealing those moments subtly and often hilariously because they allow the reader to understand what the characters do not. For example, Dr. Buggerie's book, called The Fluctuation of the Sizes of Left Feet among the Assyrians during the Ninth Century before Christ, is apparently well-known, but of all the reviews that it received, only one reviewer actually read the book. It appears, then, that the public simply reads the title, thinks that the book sounds smart, and decides that it is without actually reading the book. Really, even the title reveals that the author uses many words when fewer would do just as well, and he is also writing about feet sizes, hardly an exciting or pressing topic. Again and again, the novel points out how quickly people can be swept up in a popular and even foolish opinion when they do not stop to think for themselves.