Are you and I just focusing on different ends of a spectrum?
I'm supposing that everyone moves through the world to some degree unaware of the way they affect those around them; all the usual suspects have a part here (race, sex, class, appearance, etc. etc. etc.) but it is also, I firmly agree with Burns, just the human condition.
I'll give you an example. As a young intellectual, I was, as I see it now, kind of an arrogant prick. I didn't see it that way at the time, and I like to think I've mellowed somewhat with age, so when a coworker told me, referring to some other employees in the building, "They're all scared of you," I was genuinely taken aback. I don't even interact with these people much, and I have no idea what I did to make them feel intimidated. But it's a fact. Have I been up to my old tricks without realizing it? Would make sense, but I don't know that; they might find me intimidating for some reason completely unrelated to the swagger I used to affect in my twenties.
All I can say is that something has put me in a position of dominance or privilege that I was unaware of and that I have been acting
as the dominant without having any such intention. Sometimes when you learn something like that, it can be eye-opening. (I'm a sucker for epiphanies. One of my favorite moments in film history is when Alec Guinness says, 'My God, what have I done?')
You're focusing on people who refuse to have that eye-opening experience despite being given the opportunity; they engage in denial, in willful ignorance. This happens, no question, and it's pretty clear that two of the big reasons are (a) a sort of contra-Burns desire to maintain the image of yourself you've grown accustomed to and like, and (b) the simplicity of not dealing with decidedly unpleasant issues like sexism, racism, oppression, and your role in them (and so back to (a)).
Maybe the difference is something like this: we all lack some awareness of how we affect others -- and you can't quite call this a lack of
self awareness because others are involved from the start (this is why I had so much trouble formulating my last post) -- but this is your immediate environment we're talking about; but then there's lack of awareness of the society you're a part of, what goes on in it, what the experiences of others, especially others unlike you, are like, and, to get to the point, the experiences of others unlike you interacting with people quite a bit like you. Burns doesn't say anything stops us from seeing and understanding that stuff; if we don't, that's a failing beyond what he talks about, a failure to see or a failure to draw connections between what you see "out there" and your own life.