Skepticism about activists’ motives can invalidate truthful antiracist claims

Evidence

Ironically what makes such reactionary positions tenable is the very radicalness of psychoanalytic skepticism vis a vis ideology. In Civilisation and its Discontents Freud suggests that the way to psychic hell may well be paved with good intentions. In what may today be read as a pioneering study of the culture of complaint, he suggests that behind charitable deeds and fine - or politically correct - words we may frequently discern far less creditable motivations at work. Political activism always has its “other scene.” He does not, however, say that this is always or automatically the case, or even where it is, that the effect is to invalidate the “do gooding.” Black militants who make knee-jerk denunciations of racism when something goes wrong in their own private lives may be using political rhetoric as means to evade their existential responsibility, or they may be giving an entirely accurate and dispassionate account of some process of discrimination they have personally suffered. And conceivably they may be doing both! There is no law of automatic inversion whereby what is consciously affirmed is inevitably unconsciously denied. It is always a matter of investigation, not a priori judgment, and the answer - the unconscious meaning of the situation - will vary from case to case. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1260

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEEPTHINKING: The whole argument is a tight paradox: the very tool (psychoanalytic skepticism) that could unmask ideology is the tool that, misused, invalidates legitimate victims’ testimony. The closing insistence that unconscious meaning is ‘always a matter of investigation, not a priori judgment’ is a genuinely hard-won methodological principle.
• XREF: Connects to the general literature on epistemics of testimony and what Miranda Fricker calls testimonial injustice — the systematic credibility deficit given to certain speakers.

Related

• Political motives and unconscious self-deception can coexist without either invalidating the other (similarity 0.88)
• Activists came to believe they themselves were self-interested despite contrary evidence (similarity 0.80)