Why do we believe some people more readily than others? When a well-dressed professional speaks, we tend to credit their claims almost automatically. When someone marked by poverty, youth, or marginalized identity says the same thing, we often hesitate—demanding more evidence, more credentials, more proof.

This asymmetry isn't merely about individual bias. It represents something philosopher Miranda Fricker calls epistemic injustice—a systematic wrong that occurs when social prejudices corrupt our practices of knowing. Unlike more familiar forms of injustice that harm people economically or physically, epistemic injustice harms them specifically as knowers. It undermines their capacity to contribute to shared understanding.

Fricker's framework reveals how power doesn't just determine who gets resources or opportunities. It determines who gets believed, whose experiences become intelligible, and whose voices shape collective knowledge. Understanding epistemic injustice helps explain why certain perspectives remain systematically excluded from our shared understanding of the world.

The most straightforward form of epistemic injustice occurs when we assign someone less credibility than they deserve because of their social identity. Fricker calls this testimonial injustice. It happens when prejudice causes a hearer to give a speaker's word less weight than it warrants.

Consider how this operates in courtrooms, medical consultations, and workplace meetings. A Black patient describing their pain symptoms may be doubted in ways a white patient wouldn't be. A young woman reporting harassment may face skepticism that an older man wouldn't encounter. These aren't merely interpersonal slights—they represent systematic patterns where certain groups consistently receive credibility deficits.

The harm here is distinctive. When you're not believed, you're not just denied something you want. You're denied recognition as someone capable of contributing to knowledge. Your status as a rational agent—a knower—is degraded. This wounds people in their capacity to participate in what Fricker calls the epistemic economy: the social system through which we exchange information and build understanding together.

Testimonial injustice also corrupts the knowledge that communities produce. When certain voices are systematically discounted, communities lose access to evidence, perspectives, and insights those voices would provide. The injustice isn't only suffered by individuals—it impoverishes collective understanding. We all know less because some people aren't heard.

Takeaway

Credibility is socially distributed, not individually earned. When prejudice determines whose testimony counts, both individuals and communities lose access to knowledge they need.

Sometimes the problem isn't that people aren't believed—it's that they can't articulate their experience at all. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when gaps in shared interpretive resources leave certain experiences unintelligible, even to those who have them.

Before terms like 'sexual harassment' or 'postpartum depression' entered common usage, people suffered these experiences without adequate concepts to understand or communicate what was happening to them. A woman in the 1960s experiencing unwanted sexual advances at work might have felt something was wrong but lacked the conceptual tools to identify it as a systematic pattern of injustice rather than personal misfortune.

This form of injustice is particularly insidious because it operates invisibly. The person suffering it may not even recognize themselves as wronged. They may blame themselves, feel confused, or simply endure experiences they cannot name. The absence of interpretive resources isn't just an intellectual gap—it prevents people from making sense of their own lives.

Hermeneutical injustice arises because social power influences whose experiences get conceptualized and named. Those with power tend to have their experiences reflected in shared language and frameworks. Those without power find their experiences falling into conceptual lacunae—gaps in the collective hermeneutical resource. The powerful don't intentionally create these gaps, but they benefit from not having to confront experiences that remain literally unspeakable.

Takeaway

Understanding requires concepts, and concepts are socially constructed. When marginalized experiences lack names, people cannot fully understand or communicate what happens to them.

Recognizing epistemic injustice creates obligations for repair. Fricker argues that individuals can cultivate what she calls testimonial justice—a virtue that involves actively correcting for prejudicial credibility assessments. This means developing reflexive awareness of how identity prejudices might be distorting one's credibility judgments and working against those distortions.

But individual virtue isn't sufficient. Institutions that produce and transmit knowledge—universities, courts, newsrooms, medical systems—need structural reforms. This might include diversifying who participates in knowledge production, creating mechanisms for marginalized perspectives to be heard, and developing practices that actively solicit input from those typically excluded.

Addressing hermeneutical injustice requires something even more demanding: expanding shared interpretive resources. This happens when previously silenced communities gain voice and contribute new concepts to collective understanding. The emergence of terms like 'microaggression' or 'emotional labor' represents precisely this kind of hermeneutical repair—experiences that were once inchoate become articulable.

The goal isn't simply inclusion for its own sake. It's that communities with more diverse epistemic contributions actually know more. They have access to evidence and perspectives they would otherwise lack. Epistemic justice isn't just about fairness to individuals—it's about building institutions and practices capable of producing better, more complete understanding of the world we share.

Takeaway

Epistemic repair requires both individual virtue and institutional change. We must actively correct credibility distortions and expand the concepts available for understanding marginalized experience.

Fricker's framework reveals knowledge as fundamentally social—not just in how it spreads, but in how power shapes whose contributions count. Epistemic injustice isn't a peripheral concern but a structural feature of how communities produce understanding.

This analysis carries uncomfortable implications. If credibility is socially distributed according to patterns of prejudice, then each of us participates in—and potentially perpetuates—epistemic injustice through our everyday assessments of whose word to trust.

Yet the framework also offers hope. By understanding how social power corrupts knowledge practices, we gain resources for repair. We can cultivate virtues, reform institutions, and expand interpretive resources. The goal is knowledge communities where every capable knower can contribute—and where our shared understanding grows richer because no voice is systematically silenced.