19 09 15

Wang, Against innocence. Race, gender, and the politics of safety

The dis­cur­sive stra­te­gy of appea­ling to safe­ty and inno­cence is also enac­ted on a micro-level when white radi­cals mani­pu­late “safe space” lan­guage to main­tain their power in poli­ti­cal spaces. They do this by silen­cing the cri­ti­cisms of POC under the pre­tense that it makes them feel “unsafe.” This use of safe space lan­guage conflates dis­com­fort and actual immi­nent dan­ger — which is not to say that white people are entit­led to feel safe any­way. 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 most ludi­crous example of this that comes to mind was when a woman from Occupy Baltimore mani­pu­la­ted femi­nist lan­guage to defend the police after an “occu­pier” cal­led the cops on a home­less man. When the police arri­ved to the encamp­ment they were ver­bal­ly confron­ted by a group of pro­tes­ters. During the confron­ta­tion the woman made an effort to pro­tect the police by inser­ting her­self bet­ween the police and the pro­tes­ters, tel­ling those who were angry about the cops that it was unjus­ti­fied to exclude the police. In the Baltimore City Paper she was quo­ted saying, “they were vio­la­ting, I thought, the cops’ space.”

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. 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. After the woman from Occupy Baltimore came out as a sur­vi­vor of vio­lence and said she was trau­ma­ti­zed by being yel­led at while defen­ding the cops, I noti­ced that many people became unwilling to take a cri­ti­cal stance on her bla­tant­ly pro-cop, clas­sist, and home­less-pho­bic actions and com­ments, which inclu­ded sta­te­ments like, “There are so many home­less drunks down there — suf­fe­ring from a nas­ty disease of addic­tion — what do I care if they are there or not ? I would rather see them in treat­ment — that is for sure — but where they pass out is irre­le­vant to me.” Let it be known that anyone who puts their body bet­ween the cops and my com­rades to pro­tect the State’s mono­po­ly on vio­lence is a col­la­bo­ra­tor of the State. 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.

On the flip side of this is a radi­cal queer cri­tique that has recent­ly been leve­led against the “safe space” model. In a sta­te­ment from the Copenhagen Queer Festival tit­led “No safer spaces this year,” fes­ti­val orga­ni­zers wrote regar­ding their deci­sion to remove the safer-space gui­de­lines of the fes­ti­val, offe­ring in its place an appeal to “indi­vi­dual reflec­tion and res­pon­si­bi­li­ty.” (In other words, ‘The safe space is impos­sible, the­re­fore, fend for your­self.’) I see this rejec­tion of col­lec­tive forms of orga­ni­zing, and unwillin­gness to think beyond the indi­vi­dual as the foun­da­tio­nal poli­ti­cal unit, as part of a his­to­ri­cal shift from queer libe­ra­tion to queer per­for­ma­ti­vi­ty that coin­cides with the advent of neo­li­be­ra­lism and the “Care of the Self”-style “poli­tics” of choice). By reac­ting against the fai­lure of safe space with a sus­pi­cion of articulated/explicit poli­tics and col­lec­ti­vism, we flat­ten the issues and miss an oppor­tu­ni­ty to ask cri­ti­cal ques­tions about the dis­tri­bu­tion of power, vul­ne­ra­bi­li­ty, and vio­lence, ques­tions about how and why cer­tain people co-opt lan­guage and infra­struc­ture that is meant to respond to inter­nal­ly oppres­sive dyna­mics to per­pe­tuate racial domi­na­tion. As a Fanonian, I agree that remo­ving all ele­ments of risk and dan­ger rein­forces a poli­tics of refor­mism that just repro­duces the exis­ting social order. 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. People of color who use pri­vi­lege theo­ry to argue that white people have the pri­vi­lege to engage in ris­ky actions while POC can­not because they are the most vul­ne­rable (most like­ly to be tar­ge­ted by the police, not have the resources to get out of jail, etc) make a cor­rect assess­ment of power dif­fe­ren­tials bet­ween white and non-white poli­ti­cal actors, but ulti­ma­te­ly erase POC from the his­to­ry of mili­tant struggle by fal­se­ly asso­cia­ting mili­tan­cy with whi­te­ness and pri­vi­lege. When an ana­ly­sis of pri­vi­lege is tur­ned into a poli­ti­cal pro­gram that asserts that the most vul­ne­rable should not take risks, the only poli­ti­cal­ly cor­rect poli­tics becomes a poli­tics of refor­mism and retreat, a poli­tics that neces­sa­ri­ly capi­tu­lates to the sta­tus quo while era­sing the lega­cy of Black Power groups like the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army. For Fanon, 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.

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« Against inno­cence. Race, gen­der, and the poli­tics of safe­ty »
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vol. 1
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Lies jour­nal n° 10
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