Why discrimination feeds ignorance - and vice versa

In 2021, a study conducted under the aegis of DARES on discrimination in hiring led to the following conclusion: "on average, at comparable quality, applicants whose identity suggests a North African origin are 31.5% less likely to be contacted by recruiters than those with a first and last name of French origin". More generally, over the past ten years, INSEE has noted a 4-point increase in discrimination, the three main sources of which are gender, origin and age. Faced with such a trend, the Défenseur des droits called for "urgent action" and reminded us that "this discrimination, which is often not very visible, has a lasting and tangible impact on the lives of millions of individuals, jeopardizing their most fundamental rights".

Ousama Bouiss, University of Montpellier

While many works from disciplines such as economics, sociology and psychology offer us resources for thinking about this problem, what about contemporary philosophy?

One answer may lie in the concept of"epistemic injustice" coined by philosopher Miranda Fricker, who identifies a cause of discrimination in our intellectual attitudes. In the light of this notion, social injustice is no longer just a matter of acting badly, but also of "thinking badly".

This notion is a factor that systematically aggravates these injustices - whatever their nature.

Indeed, ignorance and a lack of distance from our own prejudices, and the confusion between dominant culture and intelligence, fuel this phenomenon.

Belonging to a dominant social group can thus lead to the belief that its reasoning is "the right one", "the only one" or even "the best", and therefore inherently superior to that of the dominated groups. At the same time, access to knowledge and the time available to learn and inform oneself are unevenly distributed according to social background or family habits; yet it is, among other things, knowledge that enables us to reason, to put ourselves in other people's shoes, and to access debates on ideas.

What is "epistemic injustice"?

Let's take a look at our ordinary lives and the importance of our credibility in social relations. In order to build trusting relationships and, quite simply, to initiate our process of integration into society, we have a dual need: on the one hand, to be believed and therefore judged as trustworthy and, on the other, to be understood. If an individual lies repeatedly, it's likely that his or her credibility will be called into question; and that's a reasonable and fair conclusion to draw.

However, if a person's credibility is called into question because of their social status, i.e. their membership of a particular social group, then we can speak of epistemic injustice. "Injustice" because it is an inalienable right to be recognized in one's ability to reason. As stated in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience, and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood". "Epistemic" because this injustice relates to the field of knowledge.

Discredit and misunderstanding

In her celebrated book Epistemic Injustice. Power and the Ethics of Knowing, published in 2007, Miranda Fricker theorizes epistemic injustice in two forms: testimonial and hermeneutic.

Testimonial injustice is an intellectual discredit attributed to others because of their social status and fed by prejudice. The first example Miranda Fricker cites is that of a policeman who disbelieves a person because of his skin color. Another comes from the film The Talented Mr. Ripley, where the character Herbert Greenleaf discredits the murder charge defended by Marge Sherwood by declaring: "Marge, there's female intuition and then there are facts". With these words, Greenleaf discredits Marge not for the content of her words or her intellectual attitude, but for her gender. In the rest of the story, this sexist remark allows him to dismiss any suspicion of her, until Marge's word is rehabilitated and the real culprit is discovered.

When a situation like Marge's arises, the discriminated person may find it difficult to give an account of her experience in order to be understood. For Miranda Fricker, the second type of epistemic injustice, described as hermeneutic, is rooted in collectively shared interpretative resources. It is difficult for the victim to formulate understandable statements, because the words or facts she relates are absent from the language or culture of her group. A case in point is that of sexual harassment, which the dominant culture makes difficult both to denounce and to articulate, due to the absence of common notions for naming this kind of event.

Both forms of epistemic injustice feed the ignorance of oppressors. In one case, they are guilty of their own stupidity, because they let themselves be guided by their own prejudices. In the second, they are partly victims of the intellectual situation of their group, which is lacking in interpretative resources.

A democratic problem

From the point of view of the oppressed, the democratic stakes of our problem are obvious: deprived of the right to equal dignity, intellectually scorned, the attitude of oppressors helps to exclude them from the public arena. A shared blindness to the stories of their experiences excludes their points of view from the space of judgment and decision-making. The rich literature referred to in the introduction to this article makes it possible to measure the practical consequences of such a state of affairs.

From the point of view of the oppressors, whom we'd like to ignore but whom respect for equal dignity prevents us from doing so, the problem lies in the impossibility of gaining access to free, enlightened citizenship. In Kantian terms, the difficulty lies in the oppressor's inability to emerge from his state of "minority" to that of "majority". This minority "consists in the inability to use one's intelligence without being directed by others" and, even more, in the lack of desire to think for oneself. Prejudices acquired, often involuntarily, in childhood and developed over the course of one's personal history place the oppressor in a state of alienation that the philosophers of the Enlightenment fought against with force.

As Kant reminded us in What is Enlightenment?the spread of enlightenment requires nothing more than freedom, and the most harmless of all freedoms, the freedom to make public use of one's reason in all things". Our misfortune in this respect is that "it is [...] difficult for each individual in particular to work his way out of the minority that has almost become second nature to him".

How do you resist stupidity to become a free and enlightened citizen?

"Sapere aude" ("Dare to know") could be declared with Kant, who saw, in this injunction to the courage to use one's own intelligence, "the motto of enlightenment". In line with Miranda Fricker's theory that epistemic injustice is an intellectual vice, resisting stupidity means resisting vices and cultivating virtue. For example, it would mean fighting against one's own intellectual arrogance, which leads one to despise the ability of others to think, or one's laziness of mind, which leads one to be content with one's prejudices and false beliefs.

But 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 means that resisting stupidity requires us to regulate our desires in the direction of truth and knowledge. Without this desire for truth and knowledge, which is essential if we are to become masters of our own thoughts, individuals will find it difficult to revise their judgments, since what guides them is not what is true, 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 individual work on 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 guaranteeing freedoms. From then on, we expect them to have a certain power to regulate our bad behavior, particularly unjust behavior that harms the freedom of others.

In the first place, we can legitimately expect schools to foster the virtuous formation of our intelligence, and to nurture in every citizen a taste for, and even a desire for, truth, freedom, reason and justice. Secondly, it is imperative that the epistemic culture of public institutions (police, justice, etc.) places at the heart of its principles the sense of virtue and resistance to vices. Finally, a public space that guarantees the free expression of conflicts and guarantees the oppressed the possibility of denouncing the injustices they suffer is indispensable to the establishment of a truly democratic society. It is in this sense that philosopher José Médina, following Fricker, calls for "epistemic resistance", i.e. "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 bring to the fore invisibilized life experiences, or social movements that challenge the dominant order of thinking about gender, family or work, are good examples of this "epistemic resistance". Through this struggle, the oppressed participate in their own emancipation, as well as that of their oppressors alienated by ignorance.

Ousama Bouiss, PhD student in strategy and organization theory, University of Montpellier

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.