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.”

中文翻译：

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当某事非人化时，它是暴力的，但当它升华时，它不是暴力的

认识论暴力是活的，也是有问题的。毫无疑问，它使非西方社会的成员或与西方、受过教育、工业化、富有和民主（WEIRD）白人不同的人非人化。心理学具有白人、富裕、西方的倾向，因为中产阶级、西方、基督教、男性、白人 (MWCMW) 的价值观被视为参考框架。在这篇评论中，我首先展示了 Held (2020) 的“true-for 和 true-about 介词”框架如何有助于理解非洲人倾向于将精神障碍归因于精神原因的发现。然而，我通过澄清认识论暴力的概念和处理作为语言暴力形式的“他者”的概念来回应她的主要论文。我进一步认为，对不伤害对照组成员的群体差异的解释不是暴力的；如果某事促进社会正义，它就不再是暴力，而是认识论“积极和平”的一个实例。