The Extent of Unique Marginalized Experience, Identifying Bad Ideology, and Other Potential Sources of Epistemic Advantage

        

        I think its hard to say that consciousness-raising can help a non-marginalized person "acquire many (if not all) of the epistemic advantages that oppression affords those who are socially marginalized" (Toole 423). As I understand it, consciousness-raising is analogous to the training an expert would as the mechanism of obtaining their expertise (Toole 418). But while I see how one could learn to understand some of the challenges and unique interest areas of a given marginalized group, one can never claim to fully understand what it is like to live as a member of the group. I'd imagine there's an aspect of continuous living under the specific oppression of society day in and day out that is incommunicable to those who don't have to deal with the same challenges. Consciousness-raising is an undoubtedly important tool for limiting the gap in understanding, but humility about the limits of what one can understand about the diversity of marginalized groups is probably an important virtue as well. 

        In a similar vein, I'm curious how one can be better at identifying bad ideology. Consciousness-raising involves "coming together in groups, identifying commonalities in experience, and developing a critical perspective on those commonalities" (Toole 417). How can you be sure that you aren't missing oppressed perspectives due to the influence of bad ideology on those people? Or even wrongly discounting a perspective under the impression that they are persuaded by bad ideology? An example that comes to mind is the discourse around the usage of the word latinx, where some people think they are introducing a word that is conscious of the marginalized perspective of some LGBTQIA+ people, whereas other people think it fails to consider the marginalized perspective of some latino people in the US who already understand the masculine form of spanish words like latino to work for gender neutral cases. The process of moving towards epistemically privileged standpoints is said to require an understanding of marginalized perspectives with "an awareness of social, political, and other factors that maintain the status quo," but who is to determine what that awareness accurately looks like (Toole 412)? Broadly I understand that you can see who ever has the most stuff, who ever has the least stuff, and analyze what power dynamics keep stuff disparities in place, but I can still see it being difficult to concretely know if I'm under the influence of some ideology or not. 

        Finally, I'm curious if epistemic advantage is unique to marginalized groups, or if it can arise in any minority grouping. I can see how marginalized groups have a greater incentive to understand the non-marginalized perspective in combination with their own, but I could also conceive of a number of unique epistemic advantage afforded to the top 0.1% of wealth, or other minority non-marginalized groups. For example, those with more money than they can spend are able to experience running out of physical wants, and thus are potentially more inclined to look for value outside of the constant pursuit of more money. Or even Northeners who have have more perspective on living in cold environments. Generally, I'm unsure of whether the claim in Toole is that marginalized standpoints are necessarily superior than dominant stand points, or whether marginalized standpoints are one particularly important standpoint to be understood along with many different perspectives. 

Excited for class and food tomorrow!

Aidan :)