Epistemological Privilege: Worth Voting For

The quick and dirty definition of epistemology is the study of what we know and how we know it. White feminists and women of color have expanded the definition, usefully, by telling us the knower matters, too. Who you are changes what you know, how you can know, what you consider to be knowledge. There are things women know that men don't and can't. And there are things people of color in our society know about our society that white people don't -- and sometimes won't hear or learn.

Epistemology matters, because what we know underpins what we are willing, motivated, and able to do.

That's something Ignacio Ellacuría knew; he was a scholar, philosopher, community activist and priest in El Salvador, who was gunned down in 1989 along with five other priests and two women of their community. A key part of Ellacuría's work was the establishment of an epistemological basis for theology and other forms of knowledge. Embued as he was with the pain and hope of the Salvadoran people, Ellacuría asserted the only adequate form of knowledge was knowing that became critically aware of reality (particularly realities that were not as they should be), took responsibility for that reality, and worked to transform that reality.

This epistemology has implications for who can know adequately. People who live in a given reality and are most directly affected by it have the best chance to be able to perceive with a critical awareness, and certainly will be most strongly motivated to take responsibility for and work to transform that reality. People who benefit from a certain reality will tend to want to maintain it, even if others report they are injured or oppressed by it. In order to protect our benefits, we will choose not to see the reality that others are hurt by the same reality that benefits us. We wear epistemological blinders.

These dynamics operate everywhere someone benefits and someone is oppressed by a given reality, in ways too long to address in this post (but I promise to return to the topic).

My focus here is on the piece called "epistemological privilege," and my argument that Barack Obama has it.

Obama's middle-class upbringing and work as a community organizer give him a sense of the challenges faced by people whose work supports our society and way of life, even as the marketing and political machines hide or misrepresent their reality. In a society that enculturates poorer people -- especially poor white people -- to identify with the values of wealthier people, and to vote against their own best interests because of that identification, this knowledge matters.

Obama is biracial, and was raised predominantly by white women, and yet his appearance is such that he is "read" as black in our society. Accordingly, he knows our society from both of these perspectives, and can see reality from both of these vantage points. In a society still shaped by racial prejudice and privilege -- in ways white people do not want to and often cannot acknowledge, in ways that hurt the life chances of people of color -- this knowledge matters.

Obama is not a perfect candidate, and will not be a perfect president, if we elect him today; but he is more in touch with the realities in this country that need to be transformed than any other candidate has ever been. I am under no illusion that his leadership will overcome all partisan and pork-barrel politics; he cannot undo our well-ingrained selfishness and fear all by himself.

But if we elect Barack Obama president, we will at least have the opportunity to follow a leader who will try to take us by a different road.

And you know what happens when you take the same old road ... you end up in the same old place.

We must all become critically aware of reality (particularly realities that are not as they should be), take responsibility for reality as it is, and work to transform that reality into what it should be: a society and culture that values and works for the abundant life God intends for all.