Silencing and humiliation are forms of power-over that preserve dominance and disrupt connection. Silencing denies marginalized people the power to name their experience. Humiliation diminishes a person’s worth or standing, using shame to enforce compliance and isolation.

Silencing can happen while someone is still speaking. Their account may be dismissed, mocked, or replaced by an explanation that protects the person with more power. Humiliation makes their dignity or belonging seem conditional: accept your place, stop questioning, or risk being made small. These are particular ways that power-over operates. Controlling images help justify whose experience gets dismissed.

A person may recognize the treatment as unjust without accepting the judgment made about them. Humiliation can happen privately as well as publicly. A quiet response may be a way of protecting oneself; noticing silencing does not require someone to speak. These experiences may also bring shame, a feeling of being unworthy of belonging. Silencing and humiliation draw attention to how people are treated and whose account is pushed out of connection.

Judith V. Jordan made the social function of shaming explicit in Relational Development: Therapeutic Implications of Empathy and Shame (1989). She described how dominant groups silence marginalized people and protect their own account of reality. What feels intensely personal can therefore serve a social purpose: making another person's truth harder to express or trust. Culture and power were already central to this account.

Linda M. Hartling, Wendy Rosen, Maureen Walker, and Jordan developed this work in Shame and Humiliation: From Isolation to Relational Transformation (2000). In her opening section, Hartling examined humiliation as inflicted degradation and social control. Encouraging people to blame themselves diverts attention from dominant groups' conduct. Jordan's later section connected shaming marginalized groups with suppressing realities that challenge dominance. 

Harriet L. Schwartz brought these concerns into educational relationships in Connected Teaching (2019). She examined an encounter in which an adviser dismisses a student's explanation and reasserts authority. Shaming someone for not knowing can send them into isolation and make seeking help harder. Her discussion also keeps substantive feedback possible: a student's work can need improvement while the student remains valued. These examples help us notice how ordinary teaching practices can either diminish a person's standing or preserve room for learning. 

In Interrupting Whiteness in Social Justice Work: RCT Offers Us a Path (2026), Alicia Wargo and Schwartz describe a fictional example of someone whose childhood questions were repeatedly dismissed and who later stays quiet in antiracism training. Her protection can be mistaken for lack of engagement. Read alongside earlier work on silencing, this example invites attention to the history behind quietness and the cultural messages that make questions costly. BCC's definition brings these concerns together around the uses of power that undermine voice, dignity, and connection. 

Recall a small moment when someone's concern was met with a degrading label. Separate what they were trying to name from what was said about them. Try putting the concern into words without the label. Notice what becomes visible when the person's worth is no longer the question.

If this is your own experience, you might begin privately or with someone you trust. If you joined in the dismissal, notice what you helped leave unheard. Naming the experience can be enough for now; you do not have to return to the person who demeaned you.