Advocates for social change can approach those who are resistant to change by having faith that they are capable of reform. Or, they could withhold their faith until others demonstrate that they have changed. Call these dispositions Faith in Humanity and Democratic Distrust. At first glance, it may seem that these dispositions are at two ends of a spectrum. On one end, someone could adopt a disposition of expecting the best of people, investing them, and communicating those high expectations. On the other, someone could adopt a disposition of expecting nothing (or worse), and communicating those low expectations.
Ryan Preston-Roedder makes a case for Faith in Humanity. Preston-Roedder writes:
Many of the people we regard as moral exemplars have profound faith in people’s decency: When segregationists bombed a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four little girls, Martin Luther King, Jr. insisted that “somehow we must believe that the most misguided among them can learn to respect the dignity and worth of all human personality”
Preston-Roeder characterizes faith in humanity as a disposition to adopt charitable beliefs in others and to invest in other peoples' decency. On his view, this kind of faith can encourage people to be more decent, and Preston-Roeder also worries that a disposition of distrust can backfire in this sense. Additionally, he argues that faith in humanity can help people avoid injustice in themselves because it protects people against the tendency to blame or sanction people who don't deserve it.
On the other hand, faith in humanity is risky. It can make people vulnerable to exploitation, and they may fail to blame or sanction people who really do deserve it. Preston-Roeder argues that the risk is worth it because it is better to fail to punish the guilty than to mistakenly punish the innocent.
Contrast Faith in Humanity with Democratic Distrust. Meena Krishnamurthy makes that King also displayed democratic distrust. She writes,
The value of distrust is primarily motivational: distrust motivated Black citizens and their supporters to engage in new forms of action that would work to ensure racial justice. Its value is contingent. The connection between distrust and being so motivated is not a necessary one, but it is a tight one. If King had continued to trust White moderates, then political change would likely not have come or, at least, would have come very much later. It is King’s confident belief that White moderates would not act justly and that Bull Connor and other avatars of institutionalized racism would continue to act unjustly that motivated him to take things into his own hands. It is why he couldn’t wait any longer.
How can faith in humanity be compatible with democratic distrust? How could both dispositions explain King's civil rights work? Preston-Roeder and Krishnamurthy’s accounts both have a cognitive and a volitional component. Both accounts are justified on principled and pragmatic grounds.
Maybe the answer is that the two dispositions aren’t on a spectrum, as King's example shows. Maybe the two dispositions rely on each other. On the one hand, people have faith in the goodness of others and their capacity for change only when they can recognize that others are falling short, need to change, and won't do it on their own. This is a kind of distrustful mode of recognition. On the other hand, distrust can only be motivational and pragmatic if there is also some hope that people can change eventually.
Or, it could be that distrust is a justified disposition to adopt when considering direct action or immediate political reform. Still, this disposition is not as productive or motivationally useful in the absence of faith that even the worst people are capable of profound moral transformation.