Yo so I guess we gotta talk about structural power and proximal power.

People of color lack structural power necessary to oppress white people.

But some PoC have proximal power by choosing to collude with whiteness. The border patrol and cops of color are examples of this.

Black and brown people use their *proximity* to whiteness to oppress, harm, deport, murder, arrest etc other Black and brown people every day.

Is that racism? Using the tools of whiteness to oppress Black/brown folk is always racism, even if the tools are in Black/brown hands.

Proximal power is always given conditionally or temporarily. And it is revoked the minute a Black or brown person tries to use that power for liberation.

Whiteness will never full accept you, but if you fully capitulate to whiteness it will place your body between it and PoC

Franz Fanon does really incredible analysis on this phenomenon that I couldn’t do justice to if I tried.

But whiteness will happily put the tools of racism in brown and Black hands so that white people don’t have to do the dirty work themselves. This has always been true.

Fanon argues that giving a few Black and brown people the power to control, contain, and coerce their neighbors and peers is actually fundamental to colonization and white supremacy.

Maybe the word for this lateral oppression isn’t technically racism but functionally?