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With each Black woman, man, child, and trans person killed by the police their faces and stories are spread throughout the internet and streets. By sharing their stories we humanize them. In a complex and ever expanding system of oppression, it’s vital to keep people at the forefront. One way we do this is by confronting and attacking the dehumanization narratives utilized by the police, the broader state apparatus, and propagated by the media to discount victims of police abuse.
But these dehumanizing attacks aren’t merely negative (attacking a person’s character and lifestyle to discredit them). They come in other forms. A pernicious form of dehumanization is the veneration of a victim’s innocence, as evidenced by their life choices and personality, to the detriment of less “romantic” examples of police brutality. A victim’s accolades are used to justify why it’s so horrible that we lost them to police violence. These accolades are usually a victim’s higher education, positive and joyful demeanor or personality, their hobbies (especially if they play into norms of what it means to be “intelligent” and “gifted”), and positions in their community are paraded as reasons to mourn their deaths. This glorification of innocence provides a backdoor for dehumanization to sneak in the next time the victim of police brutality doesn’t meet this high standard of innocence.
There’s several points that require discussion to fully flesh this concept out, so bear with me. But like I said earlier, a victim’s stories are vital to growing support in our efforts to defund and dismantle the police and fight white supremacy. How you tell their stories, and how they play into the broader narrative you’re communicating, is extremely important to pay attention to. This is what I’m getting at.
Many times, how a victim’s story is told, in relation to police brutality and the industrial “justice” system complex only goes to justify the execution of less “well-behaved” people by the state.
No one deserves to be abused and killed by the police, regardless of how “innocent” they were or weren’t. Black people shouldn’t have to live squeaky clean lives just so they can be christened martyrs if the police ever end up beating or killing them.
Actually, we should aim to completely eradicate this concept of “innocence” from our rhetoric and consciousness. Innocence - like all concepts and labels within the dominant value-system - is not free of perversion. It is often a tool of suppression in white supremacist culture. The whites in power decide who is worthy of justice, who is guilty, and who is innocent. This ends up largely benefiting white people further down the class hierarchy (i.e. white privilege).
Innocence is defined by how you adhere to a seemingly endless list of unjust and petty laws. “Innocence” in an unjust system is not only used to corral oppressed groups into further exploitation, but to delineate who the oppressed are. The police use “innocence” as a tool to gun down Black people. Phrases like “I feared for my life,” and “they didn’t obey my commands” build off of this nefarious concept of “innocence.”
Innocence has been weaponized to beat and murder Black people.
Innocence is weaponized, and defined, by the police and the state who murder and exploit Black people.
Black people are considered guilty by the police before they’re even able to prove their “innocence” in a court of law.
It is weaponized right before, and right after a Black person is murdered by the state. Ever notice why so many right-wing commentators and sites work their asses off to dig up any kind of dirt on the latest victim of police brutality? Because they know most people perceive police brutality in terms of innocence. In this narrative, it’s horrible that those cops killed that Black person because they were “innocent.” It’s horrible that they were murdered when they had “so much going for them” (i.e. they were innocent, and therefore didn’t deserve to die).
When we lament the loss of a “beautiful life” - a phrase always connected to the victim’s life accomplishments and personality, and not some grand “every life is beautiful” statement - we create an other. We signal who deserves to be mourned, and who shouldn’t be killed by police. We reinforce a perverse standard of innocence that only serves to benefit the police.
In our white supremacist culture, being “guilty” is a way of life for many marginalized groups. The norms are created to benefit white people and anyone who tries to Americanize themselves. Any form of violation of the norms is therefore cause for punishment and oppression. Black people aren’t white, therefore they get punished into poverty and imprisonment, both of which are also violations of the norms. Any Black person who isn’t lined up as closely as possible to the norms imposed by white supremacy has a target on their back. Even Black people who try to “fit in” into the norms imposed on them aren’t guaranteed safe passage.
To a degree, focusing on “innocence” implies that cops get it wrong sometimes, and not that they are murdering enforcers of the state. Cops are always guilty, and always wrong, because they uphold systemic oppression.
I say all of this more for white people than anyone else, because we have the most to gain from adhering to “innocence.” In many ways, it’s easier for us to mourn a lost life when it was so clearly “not their fault” (another example of weaponized innocence).
White people need to learn to break down that inner voice of victim blaming. When we listen to a Black person’s stories of police brutality we need to use this moment to humanize them, to push back against the ingrained white supremacy inside us that demands Black people live perfect lives if they don’t want to be gunned down in the streets.
It should be obvious at this point, if you’ve been paying attention, that the police will kill Black people wherever and whenever they want. The point is, it doesn’t matter what Black people are doing. They’re considered guilty, a threat, and a target wherever and whenever by the police and white people. If the realm of activities Black people can get harassed and killed for by police is beyond categorization, then it signals larger forces are at play. It’s a systematic killing of Black people, because they’re Black.
As Black protestors have succinctly declared across the nation: All Black Lives Matter.
In a world where even innocence is weaponized to oppress Black people, we must aim for total abolition. The system is the problem, and it must burn!
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