Why Discrimination Fuels Ignorance—and Vice Versa
In 2021, a study conducted under the auspices of DARES on discrimination in hiring reached the following conclusion: “On average, when qualifications are comparable, job applications whose identities suggest a North African background are 31.5% less likely to be contacted by recruiters than those with first and last names of French origin.” More generally, over the past ten years, INSEE has observed a 4-point increase in discrimination, with the three main sources being gender, origin, and age. In light of this trend, the Defender of Rights called for “urgent action” and emphasized that “this discrimination, often invisible, creates lasting and tangible obstacles in the lives of millions of people, undermining their most fundamental rights.”
Ousama Bouiss, University of Montpellier
While much research from fields such as economics, sociology, and psychology provides us with tools for thinking about this problem, what about contemporary philosophy?
One answer may lie in the conceptof “epistemic injustice” developed by philosopher Miranda Fricker, who identifies a cause of discrimination in our intellectual attitudes. In light of this concept, social injustices are no longer linked solely to wrongdoing but also to “wrong thinking.”
This notion is a factor that consistently exacerbates these injustices—regardless of their nature.
Indeed, ignorance and a lack of perspective regarding our own biases, as well as the confusion between mainstream culture and intelligence, perpetuate this phenomenon.
Belonging to a dominant social group can thus lead people to believe that their way of thinking is “the right one,” “the only one,” or even “the best”—and therefore inherently superior to that of dominated groups. At the same time, access to knowledge and the time available for learning and staying informed are unevenly distributed across social backgrounds and family habits; yet it is knowledge, among other things, that enables us to reason, to put ourselves in others’ shoes, and to engage in the exchange of ideas.
What is “epistemic injustice”?
Let’s start with our everyday lives and the importance of credibility in our social relationships. To build trusting relationships—in other words, to begin our process of integration into society—we have a twofold need: on the one hand, to be believed and thus judged trustworthy, and on the other hand, to be understood. If an individual lies repeatedly, it is likely that their credibility will be called into question; and that is a reasonable and fair conclusion to draw.
However, if a person’s credibility is called into question because of their social status—that is, because they belong to a particular social group—then we can speak of epistemic injustice. “Injustice” because it is an inalienable right to be recognized for one’s capacity to reason. As Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rightsstates: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” “Epistemic” because this injustice pertains to the realm of knowledge.
Discredit and misunderstanding
In her renowned 2007 book *Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing*, Miranda Fricker theorizes epistemic injustice based on these two forms: testimonial and hermeneutic.
Testimonial injustice is the intellectual discrediting of another person based on their social status and fueled by prejudice. A first example cited by Miranda Fricker is that of a police officer who does not believe a person because of their skin color. Another is taken from the film The Talented Mr. Ripley, in which the character Herbert Greenleaf undermines the murder case defended by Marge Sherwood by declaring: “Marge, there’s female intuition, and then there are the facts.” With these words, Greenleaf discredits Marge not on the basis of the content of her statements or her intellectual stance, but because of her gender. As the story unfolds, this sexist remark allows him to dismiss any suspicion against him until Marge’s testimony is vindicated and, thus, the true culprit is uncovered.
When a situation like the one Marge experienced arises, the person facing discrimination may find it difficult to describe their experience in a way that others can understand. According to Miranda Fricker, the second type of epistemic injustice—referred to as hermeneutic—stems from collectively shared interpretive resources. Thus, it is difficult for the victim to formulate comprehensible statements because the words or facts they describe are absent from their group’s language or culture. A striking example is sexual harassment, which the dominant culture makes difficult both to report and to articulate due to the absence of common terms to describe such incidents.
Both forms of epistemic injustice fuel the ignorance of the oppressors. In one case, they are guilty of their own foolishness because they allow themselves to be guided by their prejudices. In the second, they are partly victims of their group’s intellectual situation, which lacks interpretive resources.
A democratic problem
From the perspective of the oppressed, the democratic implications of our problem are clear: deprived of the right to equal dignity and intellectually disparaged, the attitude of the oppressors contributes to their exclusion from the public sphere. The shared blindness regarding the narratives of their experiences leads to the exclusion of their perspectives from the sphere where judgments and decisions are formed. The rich body of literature cited in the introduction to this article allows us to assess the practical consequences of this state of affairs.
From the perspective of the oppressors—a perspective we would prefer to ignore but which respect for equal dignity compels us to acknowledge—the problem lies in the impossibility of attaining a free and enlightened citizenship. In Kantian terms, the difficulty stems from the oppressor’s inability to emerge from his state of “minority” and attain that of “majority.” This minority “consists in the inability to use one’s own understanding without being guided by others” and, even more so, in the lack of desire to think for oneself. Prejudices acquired—often involuntarily—from childhood and developed throughout one’s personal history place the oppressor in a state of alienation that the philosophers of the Enlightenment fought against with great force.
As Kant pointed out in What Is Enlightenment?, “the spread of enlightenment requires nothing other than freedom—and indeed the most harmless of all freedoms: the freedom to use one’s reason publicly in all matters.” Yet our misfortune in this regard is that “it is […] difficult for each individual in particular to work toward emerging from the state of immaturity that has almost become second nature to them.”
How can we resist stupidity and become free and enlightened citizens?
“Sapere aude” (“Dare to know”)—one might say, echoing Kant, who saw in this call to have the courage to use one’s own intellect “the motto of the Enlightenment.” Furthermore, in line with the theory developed by Miranda Fricker, who conceives of epistemic injustice as an intellectual vice, resistance to stupidity would entail resisting vices and cultivating virtue. For example, this would mean that each person must fight against their own intellectual arrogance, which leads them to despise others’ ability to think, or against their mental laziness, which pushes them to settle for their prejudices and false beliefs.
However, reason alone is not enough. Following in the footsteps of philosopher Linda Zagzebski, virtue is a stable motivation to pursue the good. In terms of knowledge, this implies that resisting foolishness requires directing our desires toward truth and knowledge. Without this desire for truth and knowledge—which is essential to becoming master of one’s own thoughts—the individual will struggle to reconsider their judgments, since what guides them is not the truth but rather what satisfies other desires (power, money, glory, authority, certainty, the desire to be right, etc.).
Finally, resistance to epistemic injustice cannot be reduced to an individual effort to examine one’s own beliefs. This is an important aspect of Miranda Fricker’s theory, which links knowledge to politics. Indeed, democratic institutions, supported by the state, play a central role in safeguarding freedoms. Consequently, we expect them to possess a certain capacity to regulate our misconduct, particularly unjust behavior that infringes upon the freedom of others.
First and foremost, we can legitimately expect schools to foster the virtuous development of our minds and to instill in every citizen a taste for—or even a desire for—truth, freedom, reason, and justice. Second, it is imperative that the epistemic culture of public institutions (police, justice, etc.) place a sense of virtue and resistance to vice at the heart of its principles. Finally, a public sphere that guarantees the free expression of conflicts and ensures that the oppressed have the opportunity to denounce the injustices they suffer is indispensable to the establishment of a truly democratic society. It is in this sense that the philosopher José Medina, following Fricker, calls for “epistemic resistance”—that is, “the use of our epistemic resources and capacities to weaken and change the normative structures of oppression as well as the complacent forms of cognitive-affective functioning that support these structures.”
Fictional narratives that highlight overlooked life experiences, or social movements that challenge the dominant order regarding how we think about gender, family, or work, are good examples of this “epistemic resistance.” Through this struggle, the oppressed contribute to their own emancipation as well as to that of their oppressors, who are alienated by ignorance.
Ousama Bouiss, Ph.D. candidate in strategy and organizational theory, University of Montpellier
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.