Why discrimination breeds ignorance—and vice versa
In 2021, a study conducted under the auspices of DARES on discrimination in hiring led to the following conclusion: "On average, for comparable qualifications, applications whose identity suggests 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 observed a 4-point increase in discrimination, the three main sources of which are gender, origin, and age. Faced with this trend, the Defender of Rights called for "urgent action" and pointed out that "this discrimination, which is often not very visible, has a lasting and concrete impact on the lives of millions of individuals, undermining their most fundamental rights."
Ousama Bouiss, University of Montpellier
While numerous 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 light of this notion, social injustices are no longer linked solely to wrongdoing, but also to "wrong thinking."
This notion is a factor that systematically exacerbates these injustices—whatever their nature.
Indeed, ignorance and a lack of perspective on our own prejudices, as well as confusion between dominant culture and intelligence, perpetuate this phenomenon.
Belonging to a dominant social group can thus lead to the belief that one's reasoning is "the right one," "the only one," or even "the best one," and therefore inherently superior to that of dominated groups. At the same time, access to knowledge and the time available for learning and gathering information 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 other people's shoes, and to engage in debates.
What is "epistemic injustice"?
Let's start with our ordinary lives and the importance of credibility in social relationships. To build trusting relationships, and therefore simply to begin our process of integration into society, we have a twofold need: on the one hand, to be believed and therefore judged to be 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, i.e., their membership in a particular social group, then we can speak of epistemic injustice. "Injustice" because it is an inalienable right to be recognized in one's capacity 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 famous book Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, published in 2007, Miranda Fricker theorizes epistemic injustice based on these two forms: testimonial and hermeneutic.
Testimonial injustice is intellectual discredit attributed to others because of their social status and fueled by prejudice. A prime example cited by Miranda Fricker is that of a police officer who does not believe a person because of their skin color. Another example is taken from the film The Talented Mr. Ripley, in which the character Herbert Greenleaf discredits Marge Sherwood's murder accusation by stating, "Marge, there's feminine intuition, and then there are facts." With these words, Greenleaf discredits Marge not on the basis of the content of her words or her intellectual attitude, but on the basis of her gender. Later in the story, this sexist remark allows him to dispel any suspicion about himself until Marge's words are vindicated and the real culprit is discovered.
When a situation such as Marge's arises, the person being discriminated against may find it difficult to recount their experience in a way that can be understood. According to Miranda Fricker, the second type of epistemic injustice, known as hermeneutic injustice, originates in collectively shared interpretive resources. This makes it difficult for the victim to formulate understandable statements because the words or facts they are describing are absent from the language or culture of their group. A striking example is sexual harassment, which the dominant culture makes difficult to report and even to describe due to the absence of common concepts for naming this type of behavior.
Both forms of epistemic injustice fuel the ignorance of oppressors. In one case, they are guilty of their own stupidity because they allow themselves to be guided by their prejudices. In the second, they are partly victims of the intellectual situation of their group, 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 disregarded, the attitude of the oppressors contributes to their exclusion from the public sphere. The shared blindness to the narratives of their experiences leads to the exclusion of their points of view from the space where judgments and decisions are formed. The rich literature mentioned in the introduction to this article allows us to measure the practical consequences of this state of affairs.
From the point of view of the oppressors, which we would like to ignore but which respect for equal dignity forbids us to do, the problem lies in the impossibility of accessing free citizenship because it is enlightened. In Kantian terms, the difficulty is linked to the oppressor's inability to emerge from his state of "minority" and achieve that of "majority." This minority "consists in his inability to use his intelligence without being directed by others" and, even more so, in his lack of desire to think for himself. Prejudices acquired, often unintentionally, 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 force.
As Kant pointed out in What is Enlightenment?, "the spread of enlightenment requires nothing more than freedom, and indeed the most harmless of all freedoms, that of publicly using one's reason in all matters." However, our misfortune in this regard is that "it is [...] difficult for each individual in particular to work to escape from the minority that has almost become second nature to them."
How can we resist stupidity and become free and enlightened citizens?
"Sapere aude" ("Dare to know") could be declared with Kant, who saw in this injunction to have the courage to use one's own intelligence "the motto of the Enlightenment." Furthermore, in line with the theory developed by Miranda Fricker, who conceives of epistemic injustice as an intellectual vice, resisting stupidity would imply resisting vices and cultivating virtue. For example, it would be a matter of each person fighting against their own intellectual arrogance, which leads them to despise the ability of others to think, or their intellectual laziness, which pushes them to be content with their prejudices and false beliefs.
However, reason alone is not enough. If we follow in the footsteps of philosopher Linda Zagzebski, virtue is a stable motivation to pursue goodness. In terms of knowledge, this means that resisting stupidity requires regulating our desires toward truth and knowledge. Without this desire for truth and knowledge, which is essential to becoming master of one's thoughts, individuals will struggle to revise their judgments, as they are guided not by what is true but rather by 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. As such, they are expected to have a certain power to regulate our misconduct, particularly unjust behavior that harms the freedom of others.
Firstly, we can legitimately expect schools to promote the virtuous development of our intellects and to nurture in every citizen a taste, even a desire, for truth, freedom, reason, and justice. Secondly, it is imperative that the epistemic culture of public institutions (police, justice, etc.) places virtue and resistance to vice at the heart of its principles. Finally, a public space that guarantees the free expression of conflicts and ensures that the oppressed have the opportunity to denounce the injustices they suffer is essential 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 invisible life experiences or social movements that challenge the dominant order in terms of how we think about sex, 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, who are alienated by ignorance.
Ousama Bouiss, PhD student in strategy and organizational theory, University of Montpellier
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.