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Against Innocence
"The political response to the murder of Troy Davis does not challenge the assumption that communities need to clean up their streets by rounding up criminals, for it relies on the claim that davis is not one of those feared criminals, but an innocent Black man. Innocence, however, is just code for nonthreatening to white civil society. Troy Davis is differentiated from other Black men-the bad ones-and the legal system is diagnosed as being infected with racism, masking the fact that the legal system is constituent mechanism through which racial violence is carried out."
44 pages
First published January 1, 2014
3 people are currently reading
630 people want to read
About the author
Jackie Wang
15 books291 followersJackie Wang is a student of the dream state, black studies scholar, prison abolitionist, poet, performer, library rat, trauma monster and PhD student at Harvard University. She is the author of a number of punk zines including On Being Hard Femme, as well as a collection of dream poems titled Tiny Spelunker of the Oneiro-Womb.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
March 25, 2018
Honestly this is one of the best things I've ever read, it's really short, available for free online. It really changed the way I've perceived "innocence," and honestly I will be referencing this so much. READ THIS. That's my review. 🗣🗣🗣Read it!!!!!! It's a very important analysis of how an emphasis on innocence is anti-Black.
December 26, 2017
"The phrase “I don’t feel safe” is easy to manipulate because it frames the situation in terms of the speaker’s personal feelings, making it difficult to respond critically (even when the person is, say, being racist) because it will injure their personal sense of security. Conversation often ends when people politicize their feelings of discomfort by using safe space language...The invocation of personal security and safety presses on our affective and emotional registers and can thus be manipulated to justify everything from racial profiling to war.30 When people use safe space language to call out people in activist spaces, the one wielding the language is framed as innocent, and may even amplify or politicize their presumed innocence...Surviving gendered violence does not mean you are incapable of perpetuating other forms of violence. Likewise, people can also mobilize their experiences with racism, transphobia, or classism to purify themselves. When people identify with their victimization, we need to critically consider whether it is being used as a tactical maneuver to construct themselves as innocent and exert power without being questioned. That does not mean delegitimizing the claims made by survivors — but rather, rejecting the framework of innocence, examining each situation closely, and being conscientious of the multiple power struggles at play in different conflicts...Militancy is undermined by the politics of safety. It becomes impossible to do anything that involves risk when people habitually block such actions on the grounds that it makes them feel unsafe."
August 30, 2023
AGAINST INNOCENCE: Race, Gender, and the politics of Safety
one of the fundamental ethical questions/problems/crises for the West: the status of difference and the status of the other. It’s as though in order to come to any recognition of common humanity, the other must be assimilated, meaning in this case, utterly displaced and effaced: “Only if I can see myself in that position can I understand the crisis of that position.” That is the logic of the moral and political discourses we see every day — the need for the innocent black subject to be victimized by a racist state in order to see the racism of the racist state.
"When the Black leadership and middle-class Blacks differentiate themselves from poorer Blacks, they feed into a notion of Black exceptionalism that is used to dismantle anti-racist struggles. This class of exceptional Blacks (Barack Obama, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell) supports the collective delusion of a post-race society."
"Žižek, for instance, responded by dismissing the riots as a “meaningless outburst” in an article cynically titled “Shoplifters of the World Unite.” Well-meaning leftists who felt obligated to affirm the riots often did so by imposing a narrative of political consciousness and coherence onto the amorphous eruption, sometimes recasting the participants as “the proletariat” (an unemployed person is just a worker without a job, I was once told) or dissatisfied consumers whose acts of theft and looting shed light on capitalist ideology. These leftists were quick to purge and re-articulate the anti-social and delinquent elements of the riots rather than integrate them into their analysis, insisting on figuring the rioter-subject as “a sovereign deliberate consciousness,”
"it is precisely the element of risk that makes militant action more urgent — liberation can only be won by risking one’s life. Militancy is not just tactically necessary — its dual objective is to transform people and “fundamentally alter” their being by emboldening them, removing their passivity and cleansing them of “the core of despair” crystallized in their bodies"
"Those considered not-human cannot give consent. Which is to say, there is no recognized subject-position from which one can state their desires. This is not to say that bodies constructed as rapeable cannot express consent or refusal to engage in sexual activity — but that their demands will be unintelligible because they are made from a position outside of proper white femininity."
The insistence on innocence results in a refusal to hear those labeled guilty or defined by the State as “criminals.”
Rejecting the politics of innocence is not about assuming a certain theoretical posture or adopting a certain perspective — it is a lived position.
one of the fundamental ethical questions/problems/crises for the West: the status of difference and the status of the other. It’s as though in order to come to any recognition of common humanity, the other must be assimilated, meaning in this case, utterly displaced and effaced: “Only if I can see myself in that position can I understand the crisis of that position.” That is the logic of the moral and political discourses we see every day — the need for the innocent black subject to be victimized by a racist state in order to see the racism of the racist state.
"When the Black leadership and middle-class Blacks differentiate themselves from poorer Blacks, they feed into a notion of Black exceptionalism that is used to dismantle anti-racist struggles. This class of exceptional Blacks (Barack Obama, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell) supports the collective delusion of a post-race society."
"Žižek, for instance, responded by dismissing the riots as a “meaningless outburst” in an article cynically titled “Shoplifters of the World Unite.” Well-meaning leftists who felt obligated to affirm the riots often did so by imposing a narrative of political consciousness and coherence onto the amorphous eruption, sometimes recasting the participants as “the proletariat” (an unemployed person is just a worker without a job, I was once told) or dissatisfied consumers whose acts of theft and looting shed light on capitalist ideology. These leftists were quick to purge and re-articulate the anti-social and delinquent elements of the riots rather than integrate them into their analysis, insisting on figuring the rioter-subject as “a sovereign deliberate consciousness,”
"it is precisely the element of risk that makes militant action more urgent — liberation can only be won by risking one’s life. Militancy is not just tactically necessary — its dual objective is to transform people and “fundamentally alter” their being by emboldening them, removing their passivity and cleansing them of “the core of despair” crystallized in their bodies"
"Those considered not-human cannot give consent. Which is to say, there is no recognized subject-position from which one can state their desires. This is not to say that bodies constructed as rapeable cannot express consent or refusal to engage in sexual activity — but that their demands will be unintelligible because they are made from a position outside of proper white femininity."
The insistence on innocence results in a refusal to hear those labeled guilty or defined by the State as “criminals.”
Rejecting the politics of innocence is not about assuming a certain theoretical posture or adopting a certain perspective — it is a lived position.
January 17, 2023
Tremendisimo. Nunca había leído algo así ni considerado el tema de la inocencia en las luchas sociales , especialmente la racial y feminista.
Me dejo pensando mucho y cambio mi perspectiva por completo. Una lectura corta pero muy importante.
Un detalle sería que si puede ser algo denso para quienes no tengan antecedentes con las ciencias sociales. Especialmente la segunda sección puede ser complicado si no conoces cierta terminología.
Pero el mensaje central de la lectura es crucial en estos tiempos. Lo recomiendo muchísimo.
Me dejo pensando mucho y cambio mi perspectiva por completo. Una lectura corta pero muy importante.
Un detalle sería que si puede ser algo denso para quienes no tengan antecedentes con las ciencias sociales. Especialmente la segunda sección puede ser complicado si no conoces cierta terminología.
Pero el mensaje central de la lectura es crucial en estos tiempos. Lo recomiendo muchísimo.
June 24, 2020
A slam dunk of an essay. Can't wait to read the rest of Carceral Capitalism.
February 11, 2022
Dare I say required reading
April 22, 2023
"not only are black men assumed guilty until proven innocent, blackness itself is considered synonymous with guilt. authentic victimhood, passivity, moral purity, and the adoption of a whitewashed position are necessary for recognition in the eyes of the state."
➵ 5 stars.
➵ 5 stars.
December 14, 2016
Bits and pieces of the writing and how our passivity plays role on the race, gender state has come to my mind often, and this article is great in providing theories and perspectives that construct the politics of innocence, safety and comfort that were playing. I thought there was this one quote that sort of summarizes my view on how we've ended up here: ' the liberal is afraid to alienate anyone and therefore he is incapable of presenting any clear alternative'
April 10, 2021
This essay is written in accessible language and is a useful - if brief - view of how the "innocent victim" is weaponized against especially - but not exclusively - Black people. It's dense with perspective that is anathema to everything I've been insidiously taught in a lifetime of middle class whiteness.
I'd like to put this on a "required to regularly re-read" list for myself, with the intention of revisiting to help get these ideas into my bones.
"When people identify with their victimization, we need to critically consider whether it is being used as a tactical maneuver to construct themselves as innocent and exert power without being questioned. That does not mean delegitimizing the claims made by survivors — but rather, rejecting the framework of innocence, examining each situation closely, and being conscientious of the multiple power struggles at play in different conflicts."
I'd like to put this on a "required to regularly re-read" list for myself, with the intention of revisiting to help get these ideas into my bones.
"When people identify with their victimization, we need to critically consider whether it is being used as a tactical maneuver to construct themselves as innocent and exert power without being questioned. That does not mean delegitimizing the claims made by survivors — but rather, rejecting the framework of innocence, examining each situation closely, and being conscientious of the multiple power struggles at play in different conflicts."
July 30, 2020
"A politics of innocence is only capable of acknowledging examples of direct, individualized acts of racist violence while obscuring the racism of a putatively colorblind liberalism that operates on a structural level."
"If the safety of women was a genuine concern, the campaigns would not have been focused on anonymous rapes in public spaces, since statistically it is more common for a woman to be raped by someone she knows. Instead, women’s safety provided a convenient pretext for the escalation of the Penal State, which was needed to regulate and dispose of certain surplus populations (mostly poor Blacks) before they became a threat to the US social order."
"If the safety of women was a genuine concern, the campaigns would not have been focused on anonymous rapes in public spaces, since statistically it is more common for a woman to be raped by someone she knows. Instead, women’s safety provided a convenient pretext for the escalation of the Penal State, which was needed to regulate and dispose of certain surplus populations (mostly poor Blacks) before they became a threat to the US social order."
January 14, 2022
Essay on the anti-black, racist, gender oppression of the white society as they decide who is killable and who is rapeable based on their view of purity and supremacy of the whites. It attacks the passivity of the society and the liberals on ignoring or misnarrating the black movements. It also talks about the capitalization of punishment in the prison industry.
Blacks suffered from racism and capitalism and the laws that made their families suffers from poverty and ignorance from black middle-class, bourgeois and the government.
Like how the writer notated the collective delusions of ended racism just by showing some black bourgeois in the media like obama and c. Rice.
Blacks suffered from racism and capitalism and the laws that made their families suffers from poverty and ignorance from black middle-class, bourgeois and the government.
Like how the writer notated the collective delusions of ended racism just by showing some black bourgeois in the media like obama and c. Rice.
July 16, 2020
As we continue to fight for abolition, we must wrestle with the fear and loathing that animates our entire social universe. This essay is a scathing indictment of the tendency across the political spectrum of predicating our actions and our attention around “innocence.” It ably and amply demonstrates how this creates a silo of humanity that further marginalizes those already most targeted by state and community violence. We must let go of our boogeymen and work to realize true freedom and care in the mess of our intimate relations and entanglements with one another.
August 10, 2025
very very good
read for free online thru LIES volume I
“stokely carmichael put it well when he said, ‘the way the oppressor tries to stop the oppressed from using violence as a means to attain liberation is to raise ethical or moral questions about violence. i want to state emphatically here that violence in any society is neither moral nor is it ethical. it is neither right, nor is it wrong. it is just simply a question of who has the power to legalize violence.’”
read for free online thru LIES volume I
“stokely carmichael put it well when he said, ‘the way the oppressor tries to stop the oppressed from using violence as a means to attain liberation is to raise ethical or moral questions about violence. i want to state emphatically here that violence in any society is neither moral nor is it ethical. it is neither right, nor is it wrong. it is just simply a question of who has the power to legalize violence.’”
September 1, 2020
Super tight argument with compelling evidence to support her claims. She presents her ideas in an intuitive and logical manner, and she throws in tidbits of information that aren't commonly known alongside popular knowledge so readers can connect concepts together. Expertly done.
July 10, 2025
“however, sympathetic radicals tend to privilege the voices of those who are educated and politically astute, rather than listening to those who know viscerally that they are fucked and act without first seeking moral approval.”
Read
July 8, 2021I found this to be very informative. I read this for a college class and felt dumb at times while reading it, but still thought it was great. More people should read this.
January 26, 2025
read for class but this should be a required reading given to all citizens.
December 9, 2021
Excellent piece on the politics of "innocence," or more precisely, the problems with the mainstream politics of passive discontent towards institutional oppression, the rhetoric of victimhood rooted in a preconceived notion of innocence.
Jackie Wang cuts through the liberal white feminist bullshit and the neoliberal individualist "personal conscience" crap, unapologetically advocating for a confrontational politics (with more than a few nods to Frantz Fanon). Provides illuminating insights on the issues of institutional racism in the US, carceral capitalism, the debates around safe spaces, the neutralizing/depoliticizing discourse of the media, etc.
You can read the full essay for free here:
https://carceralfeminism.files.wordpr...
Jackie Wang cuts through the liberal white feminist bullshit and the neoliberal individualist "personal conscience" crap, unapologetically advocating for a confrontational politics (with more than a few nods to Frantz Fanon). Provides illuminating insights on the issues of institutional racism in the US, carceral capitalism, the debates around safe spaces, the neutralizing/depoliticizing discourse of the media, etc.
You can read the full essay for free here:
https://carceralfeminism.files.wordpr...
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews