The philosophy of science is concerned with epistemology – “the study of the nature of knowledge” (Pavitt, 2001, p. 10). What is known and how knowledge is created is central to epistemic concerns. Throughout European or Western history the philosophy of science and related epistemological claims are steeped in realist ideations of a ‘so-called’ mind-independent reality and objective scientific inquiry (Pavitt, 2001). That is, for realists, there is a reality or ultimate truth out there to be studied and understood through and within abstract conceptualizations and theoretical frameworks. The goals in the realist endeavor – universal claims, governable laws, and mass generalizations. Therefore, within this paradigm, subjectivity, time and context, ideology and values are viewed as things to dominant and to control. Further, this ontological and epistemological preserve has been created and dominated for centuries (and still is) by White males (Hill-Collins, 2000). .

Even though scientific realism, explored within a philosophy of science, presents itself in many, seeming different forms (logical empiricism, empiricism, rationalism, idealism, positivism), they all have emerged from within a White masculinist psyche, reflect this experience of the world, and are validated within a community of like minded individuals (Pavitt, 2001; Wartofsky, 1968; Hempel, 1956). Most of these participants do not like having the authority of their knowledge claims and validation processes challenged. Still, a great many understand that any challenge to this philosophy of science has the potential to undermine its domination of how reality is created and represented to the masses. In Foucault’s opinion whoever controls the discourse controls how we think and what is claimed as knowledge (Foucault, 1977). Thus, the Eurocentric philosophical tradition in scientific inquiry functions as a form of power and is discursively acted out within the social sciences (Wright, 1997).

This essay is in staunch opposition the epistemological backdrop as set forth. United States Black feminism challenges a realist epistemology and philosophical position (Hill-Collins, 1989, 2000, hooks, 1981). The distinct epistemology of Black feminism is opposed to ahistorical objective scientific inquiry in the social sciences, critically addresses the Eurocentric knowledge making/validation and acknowledges, disapprovingly, the exclusionary philosophical tradition upon which scientific inquiry is based. Consequently, Black Feminism offers a new tradition in addressing the nature of knowledge and Black women’s role in establishing it.

Black feminist thought is an epistemology that “reflects the distinctive themes of African-American women’s experiences” (Hill-Collins, 2000, p. 251). It is predicated upon the standpoint of Black women and provides “primacy to concrete lived experience as a criterion of knowledge and meaning” (Houston & Davis, 2002, p.5). The central premise of Black feminism acknowledges the history of interlocking and interdependent oppressions of race, gender, and class faced by Black women in the United States (Houston & Davis, 2002, p.5). This is in direct opposition to the inadequate ways in which scientific inquiry, namely social science (through realist paradigms), has attended to a history of subjugation and its influence on Black women’s experience of the world (Hill-Collins, 2000, p. 252). The inadequacy lies in scientific inquiry that seeks to “ . . . destroy contradictions or differences in reality or in history, culture, or social life,” such as realism within the social sciences (Wright, 1997, p. 67). This homogenization, of course, is conducted by a distanced and dispassionate scientist who relies on abstract knowledge and claims bias-free research. This way of gathering knowledge has grave effects on an already marginalized group of people, like Black women. Black feminism runs counter to scientific realist claims of gathering objective generalizable knowledge through an, additionally, objective form of scientific reasoning.

But as Black feminists (Allen, 2002; Hill-Collins, 2000; hooks 1981; Houston & Davis, 2002; Watkins, 1999) strive to assert the importance and critical nature of their subjectively-centered knowledge base, they understand there is an epistemology already functioning that represents “elite White male interests” (Hill-Collins, 2000, p. 252). These opposing interests signal a power struggle for some, especially those who have worked hard to create a knowledge monopoly. For Mannheim (1954), if the origin and diffusion of a particular “thought-model” of a particular group were followed in detail, it would represent a particular way of interpreting the world (p. 276). The White masculinist way of envisioning reality is deeply rooted in scientific inquiry and knowledge claims. This perspective is highly exclusionary, effecting the knowledge validation process on multiple levels (Hill-Collins, 1989).

For instance, in his discussion of the philosophy of science, Johnstone (2002) implies that White male thinkers have dominanted the generation of scientific thought. Myletes (an island in Greece) is accepted as the absolute beginning of Athenian philosophy of science during approximately 600-425 B.C.. Nine White men (Phusis, Thales, Anaximznes, Anaximander, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Phythagous, Parmenides, Damatacrus) are credited with creating the foundation of scientific thought and inquiry (Johnston, 2002). In historicizing scientific episteme, Eberly (2002) continues this exclusionary discourse. Kant, Plato and Aristotle are discussed as the main philosophers of science. Throughout Pavitt’s book, The Philosophy of Science and Communication Theory, which outlines an extensive history of scientific inquiry, he only acknowledges two women’s contribution to science, one of which he disparages. In these examples, the contributions of White masculinist epistemological claims dominate the history of scientific thought.

Additionally the thought-model that emerges from this masculinist discourse may be engrained with racist and sexist beliefs. John Locke (15^th century) and David Hume (16^th century), both were central British philosophers of science. Their legacies are still vital within scientific realism (Pavitt, 2001, p 21-24). However, they were both racist. Locke was a shareholder in one of the most prosperous slave shipping companies in England (Thomas, p. 201). He even provided a paragraph in the then newly formed state of Carolina’s constitution that stated “slavery as an institution [should] be accepted” (Thomas, 1997, p. 208-209). Hume’s racism served as the foundation to “proslavery arguments and antiblack education propaganda” (West, 1999, p. 83). In the essay Of National Characters, he wrote, “ . . . negroes . . . [were] naturally inferior to whites [with] . . . no ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences . . .” (West, 1999, p. 83). These views were not isolated and had (still has) an effect on how philosophers envisioned and make sense of science. Lastly, Bacon “laid the ideological groundwork” for scientific inquiry in the seventeenth century (Noble, 1999, p. 57). In discussing science and nature he used terms such as “raping,” “ravaging,” and going into the “womb” of nature “to rip away her secrets” (Gherke, 2002). Bacon’s view of nature as ‘she’ or ‘her’ was extremely oppressive to women. This has, additionally, influenced the very foundation upon which scientific inquiry is based.

This brief look at the origin and diffusion of the dominant epistemological grounding in the social sciences offers a discourse predicated upon White masculinist sensibilities and ways of understanding reality. Consequently, in this thought-model there is a marginalization of Black women’s participation and the contributions any person of color has made to scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge is infused with racist ideologies, as Hume and Locke were not the only proslavery/racist philosophers of science. Women are positioned as needing to be controlled and contained as they are metaphorically represented as nature. Moreover, any other epistemological orientation is completely silenced within this tradition. All of these aspects are proof of select voices in knowledge creation. In addition, it suggests that a particular type of scientific inquiry and knowledge making is validated by a community of members who all have the same standpoint. This offers members an unprecedented form and amount of power.

Bloor’s (1991) discussion of scientific discourse notes a “Machiavellian” tendency that speaks to the Foucaultian concept of knowledge as power (p. 27). In his estimation, scientific practices are dominated by what he calls “epistemocrates” – individuals whose specialized knowledge base allows them to hide their agenda while organizing reality according to their own “normative model” (p. 27). Watkins (1999) believes this normative knowledge base “is a means of controlling how [Black women and others] think about themselves and their future possibilities as well as how they locate themselves in the world throughout time” (p. 22). This domination relies upon the ability to organize reality and is contingent upon what ideas prevail at any given moment in time. Power is eminent in that any normative model has the ability to control how and what we think (Herrick, 2001, p. 249).

The knowledge validation process allows the domination of a normative thought-model for understanding reality. The realist assumptions embedded historically within the social sciences have as their goal the “. . . re-represent[ation] [of] either ideas and objects, words and things, sentences and states of affairs, or theories and the world

(West, 1999, p. 190). West’s (1999) critical opinion finds the re-depicting of reality in a quest for obtaining a true copy is indicative of something other than “human social practice serving as the final court of appeal determining what is and what we out to believe” (p. 190). Consequently, in Black feminist thought there is over awareness of they ways in which Eurocentric epistemologies or normative thought-models are legitimized within knowledge validation processes (Hill-Collins, 2000, p. 253).

Within American social institutions, modes of inquiry must reflect a particular political and epistemological tradition (Hill-Collins, 2000, p. 253). For hooks (1989) and Hill-Collins (1989) conventional inquiry is controlled by powerful White men; hence, they control the knowledge validation process and what counts as truth. Because they must adhere to larger group normatives, such as those of culture and society, there are taken-for-granted knowledge claims that are exclusionary. As a minoritized group within a White majority, Black women’s knowledge is not taken as commonsense or as the taken-for-granted knowledge that fits the sensibilities of the majority. Moreover, as objectivity equals rationality, knowledge, truth and understanding the knowledge claims of White men are viewed as more viable in scientific inquiry. Encountering the world objectively is a perspective that defines how White masculinist science has grappled with reality for centuries (Seshadri-Crooks, 2000). On the other hand, subjectivity is viewed as irrational and suffering from a severe lack of higher understanding (Wright, 1997, p. 117-118). Black feminism is opposed because of its reliance on subjectivity, limited research base and perhaps its exclusionary thought-model. Black feminism is suppressed within the social sciences and is discredited as illegitimate within Eurocentric or Western philosophies of knowledge. It seems, however, that Black women have always been excluded, deemed as unfit, or completely misrepresented by the normative model of scientific inquiry within the social sciences.

Black women have been cast as morally and intellectually inferior through what hooks (1981) calls a “racist social science” emanating from a racist history of Black subjugation. And even though there is a growing contention about the use of scientific realism in social science and the level to which it yields viable knowledge, social science researchers are still effected by the need to adhere to the dominant thought-model that legitimates research and knowledge claims (Rosenberg, 1995). Social science researchers do utilize a realist orientation and the effects are disastrous in studies of Black women. hooks discussed in detail how the disparaging myth of the Black matriarch emerged within society through social science research within a realist tradition.

White male scholars who examined the black family by attempting to see in what ways it resembled the white family structure were confident that their data was not biased by their own personal prejudices against women assuming an active role in family decision-making. But it must be remembered that these white males were educated in an elite institutional world that excluded both black people and many white women, institutions that were both racist and sexist. Consequently, when they observed black families, they chose to see the independence, will power, and initiative of black women as an attack on the masculinity of black men. Their sexism blinded them to the obvious positive benefits to both black men and women that occurred when black females assumed an active role, [especially in a racially oppressive social system] (hooks, 1981, p. 75).

This depiction of scientific inquiry further supports the effect of the White masculinist’s normative thought-model in social science. The research reveals attempts at objective inquiry that are infected with sexist ideations. This passage reflects the lack of understanding and/or acceptance of the ways Black women’s lives have been effected by a history of oppression and how this subjugation influences their unique experience of reality. Moreover, racism is implied. Wright (1997) notes that social scientists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries continued this legacy of racism in their endeavors to study Black women (p. 117). Wright calls it a subtle racism because White male scientists were perhaps not necessarily conscious of their racism. This idea of subtle can be argued, as there was and still is a propensity for the social sciences to remain highly exclusionary in acknowledging other philosophies of knowledge.

Further, the social sciences has yet to stop perpetuating negative stereotypes of Black women, such as the infamous “welfare queen” (Hill-Collins, 2000, p. 255). In realist attempts to attain a mind-independent truth through objective scientific inquiry, overarching methodologies and methods within the social sciences seek to “ . . . slice up reality, to eliminate it freeze it, or to dominate it . . . ” (Wright, 1997, p. 67). Consequently, since there is an emphasis on abstract thought, meaning becomes abstract, as it is separated from the historical sociocultural context in which it makes sense. Again the goal is objective generalizations and theoretical testing in discovering the truth. According to Wright (1997) “[t]his [is] an inadequate way to relate to reality, in terms of apprehending, participating, evaluating, or understanding reality or what is real” (Wright, p. 133). There is a big difference between how Black women in America understand their lived experience as single mothers and how the social sciences analyzes and captures that same reality (Hill-Collins, 2000, p. 255). But this difference, while not understandable, at least is offered some further explanation.

Historically, Black women were seen as utterly unsuitable for science and only became an object of inquiry after 1970 (Hill-Collins, 2000, p.256). Accordingly, the knowledge base in sociology, in particular, taps into make sense of Black women is not reflective of any progression in scientific methods or theory. Thus, whatever social scientists were utilizing to understand Black women had to be based on highly biased stereotypes, which must still have an influence. Moreover, this long absence underscores a trend in viewing Black women as inconsequential, not worth of study. Their experience serves no purpose in dominant thought-models.

Therefore, Black feminist “ . . . epistemology [is] profoundly rooted in lived experience . . . that prioritize women’s [subjective] experiences and ways of knowing and understanding the world” (Houston and Davis, 2002, p. 6). Taking the cue from constructivism, Black feminist epistemology seeks to shed light on the specific nature of individual experience as it is created, lived and felt by that individual (Schwandt, 1998, p. 238). A major claim in Black feminism is lived experience serves as a criterion of meaning. Black women for centuries have been utilizing lived experiences to create new meanings for themselves and others in order to deconstruct and transcend racist perception of who they are (Hill-Collins, 2000, p. 258). In this endeavor there is no need for historical validation or to have the experience shared in a story, proverb, or narrative abstracted in analysis to become validated within overarching Eurocentric thought-models (Hill-Collins, 2000, p. 258). Another claim is that if no one is going study the reality of Black women’s experiences, and their collective and interlocking oppressions then Black feminism must serves as the progenitor of a new mode of knowledge making and validation.

Toward this end, Allen (2002) provides a Black feminist thought-model for “emancipatory research on Black women” in communication studies (p. 21). This model serves as a challenge to the tradition of scientific realism in the social sciences and presents seven overlapping goals in an emancipatory research endeavor. They are to (1) emancipate Black women from gendered racism and negative social ascriptions that maintain such labels as “marginalized and stigmatized;” (2) challenge essentialist notions of Black womanhood that render Black women invisible or as representing their whole race; (3) study a variety of Black women to depict and “demonstrate our heterogeneity and complexity;” (4) study domination and suppression within the context of individually and collectively lived experience and link this to “broader social and institutional issues;” (5) discover Black women’s skills and strategies in confronting gendered racism to create a base of practical wisdom; (6) generate practical wisdom models for other Black women to emulate; and (7) use innovative and or nontraditional procedures and methods that honor our primary purpose (Allen, 2002, p. 24-27). Clearly, this model centralizes the concerns and ways of making knowledge that are critical to the survival of Black women in the United States.

What is known and how knowledge is created is central to epistemic concerns. Throughout the history of science, epistemological claims have been realist in orientation. These thought-models rely heavily upon a White masculinist view of world, which views the objective rational gathering knowledge as laudable. Black feminism, although severely marginalized, challenges this tradition through a distinct epistemology that celebrates the lived experience of Black women as valid criterion in knowledge creation. Opposed to ahistorical objective scientific inquiry in the social sciences, the Black feminist tradition believes a critical interpretation of history, through personal stories, narratives and ethnographic research, is necessary in the study of Black women. Generalizable knowledge is not the aim in Black feminist methodologies as this goal erases the distinctiveness of time and context. These considerations are crucial to subverting the dominant practices in the social sciences that uncritically homogenized or mute the oppression key in Black women’s experience and central to how they make sense of the world. With time the exclusionary realm of scientific knowledge will have no choice but to accept more critical and life-world oriented epistemologies, such as Black feminism, as legitimate vehicles for knowledge creation.

References

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