If you’re a privileged person in activism or academia, you’ve likely been encouraged to “pass the mic” to marginalized people on the basis that their disadvantages give them special political insight. On one level, this norm makes sense: women, people of color, and queer people have long been excluded from these spaces, and their inclusion brings valuable perspectives that others may lack.

But this norm also has its drawbacks. According to the philosopher Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, it caricatures marginalized people, disproportionately empowers elite members of oppressed groups, and weakens relationships between people engaged in common pursuits. In his influential essay “Being-in-the-Room Privilege: Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference,” Táíwò argues that this new “deference epistemology” betrays the spirit of commonsense “standpoint epistemology,” which came out of Marxism and the women’s liberation movement. These projects didn’t compete for influence in grad school seminars or nonprofit boardrooms; they sought to strengthen bonds of comradeship in the struggle for radical change.

Táíwò talked about his essay with Daniel Denvir for The Dig, a Jacobin Radio podcast. In their conversation, which has been edited for clarity and length, they discuss how politicizing knowledge can build solidarity, rather than tearing movements apart. “If I ask someone to take the kinds of risks that activism requires,” Táíwò says, “the very minimum I owe them in return is to treat them as a person and not as a subject who I order around.”