When something dehumanizes, it is violent but when it elevates, it is not violent

Abstract

Epistemological violence is alive and problematic. There is no gainsaying that it dehumanizes members of non-Western societies or persons who differ from the Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) Whites. Psychology has a white, affluent, Western skew as the values of the middle-class, Western, Christian, male, Whites (MWCMW) are held as the frame of reference. In this commentary, I first show how Held’s (2020) “true-for and true-about prepositional” frame is useful for understanding the findings that Africans tend to attribute mental disorders to spiritual causes. However, I respond to her major thesis by clarifying the concept of epistemological violence and addressing the concept of “othering” as a form of linguistic violence. I further argue that interpretations of group differences that do not harm the members of the comparison group are not violent; if something promotes social justice, it is no longer violent but an instance of epistemological “positive peace.”