James Baldwin’s concept of racial innocence is, at its core, a tool for examining the process whereby a dominant group subjugates another while prominently, proudly maintaining an egalitarian self-image. Rather than merely point to the existence of such a seemingly untenable paradox, Baldwin uses his concept of racial innocence to interrogate how that paradox persists; how it is consciously and unconsciously maintained. In this paper, racial innocence is used to explain the process whereby Muslim political critique based on lived experiences of discrimination and marginalisation in France is rejected – and, specifically, rejected in a way that supposedly reinforces French norms of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

詹姆斯·鲍德温 (James Baldwin) 的种族无罪概念的核心是一种工具，用于检查占主导地位的群体征服另一个群体的过程，同时显着地、自豪地保持平等的自我形象。鲍德温并没有仅仅指出这种看似站不住脚的悖论的存在，而是利用他的种族无罪概念来质疑这种悖论是如何持续存在的。它是如何有意识和无意识地保持的。在本文中，种族无罪被用来解释基于法国歧视和边缘化的生活经历的穆斯林政治批评被拒绝的过程——特别是，被拒绝的方式据称会强化法国的自由、平等和博爱规范。