Healthcare Inequalities and Social Justice Blog Series: Epistemological relevance in social justice: a justified belief or pinion?

Miranda Fricker is a critical philosopher, who identified a particular form of social injustice which she named epistemic injustice which occurs when a person is wronged as a knower. Fricker explained that the harm this can do and identified there is instant injury when not believed and to be rejected or discredited on a deeper level – “to be wronged as a knower, or speaker’ is to be wronged in a capacity essential to human value” (p. 44). Sadly, epistemic injustice has become a popular concept in healthcare. In healthcare and psychiatric practice, epistemic injustice is concerned with the negative socio-epistemic experiences constantly described by individuals with psychiatric conditions and correspondingly there is a parallel with the preoccupation of scholars within healthcare studies who endorse discourses of equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) on the one hand, yet ignore racism and the epistemic injustice suffered by Black and ethnic minority populations and scholars alike?