“Whose Truth Is It Anyway?”: A Southern Daughter’s Journey into Ontology and Epistemology

Join me here for a continuation of “What I Needed & More”…

Was “grit” real because it was good? Or was it just necessary for survival, for staying sane, for making it especially as a Black woman in the South? I keep wondering how my mom came to carry the values she passed down to me. Were they taught in school? Modeled in church? Picked up in the rhythm of everyday life? Or were they born out of struggle?

What does it mean when your personal truths are shaped by systems that are already racialized and gendered? I think about the ways we, as Black people, have always known things. Through storytelling. Through community. Through spirit and discernment. However, these ways of knowing often get overlooked in traditional white, Western, male frameworks.

I’m learning about ontology and epistemology in class but I’ve lived these theories my whole life, so can my mom’s truths exist alongside academic theory? Can they breathe the same air? The things my mother taught me — pushing through pain, being twice as good, keeping your composure even when you’re falling apart — I used to see those as hard life lessons. Now I’m starting to see them for what they really are: a knowledge system.

Sandra Harding calls it standpoint epistemology — the idea that people who’ve been pushed to the margins carry knowledge because of where they stand, not despite it. My mom’s truths weren’t printed in a textbook, but they came from navigating systems that were never made with us in mind. For her, truth wasn’t abstract. It was concrete. It was daily. It was how she kept us safe. From that survival came an entire way of knowing: how to read a room, how to spot danger before it hits, how to listen to your gut when your heart is too tired to speak.

In academic spaces, knowledge has to be peer-reviewed, published, and cited, but in my home, knowledge came through watching, repeating, praying, and listening. Through intuition. Through spirit. And that doesn’t make it any less true.

I used to believe that truth only came from education. Now I’m learning that truth can come from pain, from memory, from community. Sandra Harding gave me language for what my mother already lived. I’m not just learning about ontology and epistemology — I’m living it. And through that, I’m not just questioning truth. I’m reclaiming who gets to name it.

Question: What truths have you inherited that weren’t taught in school, but taught through living?