Epistemic Discrimination

Abstract

Epistemic discrimination is prejudice, bias and discriminatory action suffered by individuals in their position as epistemic agents, that is, as individuals who can acquire knowledge, justified belief or understanding. Epistemic discrimination can be intentional or unintentional. To get a general handle on the phenomenon of epistemic discrimination, this chapter considers a subset of cases of epistemic discrimination that have been discussed in the recent literature in philosophy and beyond: the cases of epistemic injustice identified in Miranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Fricker identifies two types of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. The economic, political and ideological dimensions of US black women's oppression suppressed the intellectual production of individual black feminist thinkers. Charles Mills (2007) also emphasizes the relationship between epistemic discrimination and the ignorance of members of the dominant group. Increasingly, philosophers as well as psychologists are noticing that implicit biases can also provide a mechanism through which epistemic discrimination can be perpetrated.