No. Using the word “racist” to describe white *and* Black officers who engage in anti-blackness erases the differences of power and positionality that structure the lives of Black people. Such erasure misrepresents social reality and serves the interests of white supremacy. https://twitter.com/hairika/status/1276551252885848065

Suffice it to say that a Black officer who facilitates the oppression of Black people is also imperiling their own life and the lives of their Black loved ones by empowering state violence against Black people. The same is NOT true for white officers who enact anti-blackness.

Not going to deliver a lecture or sermon about this right now, but it’s important to understand that there are many words that can be used to describe Black people’s implication in systems of power that oppress us. It’s intellectually lazy and harmful to call complicity “racism”.

For whatever it’s worth, I completely disagree with the absurd and offensive argument that it is “racist” to acknowledge the power differential between Black people and white people under a system built on centuries of anti-blackness and white supremacy.

I will say that intersectionality may explain why some influential cis Black men have been on the forefront of describing Black people as “racist” and erasing the power analysis required to acknowledge positionality while Black women and folx tend to correctly argue otherwise..