Power Without Healing
How Co-opted Authority Reinforces Oppression
This paper examines how authority granted to historically marginalized individuals, without healing, structural transformation, or community empowerment, often reinforces existing systems of domination. Drawing on three case studies, the appointment of Jewish capos in Nazi ghettos, the role of Black police officers within U.S. law enforcement, and the rise of white corporate feminism, the paper argues that such forms of delegated power are not liberatory. Instead, they serve to stabilize systems of oppression by masking violence behind representation, fragmenting solidarity, and weaponizing identity for institutional legitimacy.
Introduction
“Power, when granted without healing, does not empower; it corrupts. Authority, when severed from self-awareness and love, becomes a tool of control rather than a force for liberation.” In oppressive systems, marginalized individuals are often placed in positions of symbolic authority not to repair historical harms, but to lend credibility to the status quo. This co-optation, particularly when enacted without personal or collective healing, reinforces the systems that originally produced harm. Through case studies involving Nazi-appointed capos, Black law enforcement officers in racist institutions, and white corporate feminists embedded in capitalist hierarchies, this paper explores how marginalized identities are repurposed to stabilize power rather than challenge it.
Case Study 1: Capos in the Warsaw Ghetto
During the Holocaust, Nazi authorities appointed Jewish prisoners as capos to oversee forced labor, control prisoner behavior, and manage deportations. Though some acted under threat of death, others internalized their roles and inflicted violence upon fellow Jews (Tec, 1986). Primo Levi (1989) famously identified such individuals as existing in a “gray zone,” where survival often blurred into complicity. This arrangement weaponized trauma and identity to fracture resistance, rendering capos both victims and instruments of a genocidal regime. Their authority was not real empowerment—it was conditional, coercive, and engineered to destabilize communal solidarity.
Case Study 2: Black Police Officers and Systemic Racism in U.S. Policing
In the U.S., Black police officers have long served in departments steeped in white supremacy. While often heralded as signs of progress or reform, these officers frequently operate within institutions that over-police, surveil, and incarcerate Black communities (Vitale, 2017). Officers who attempt to challenge these norms are marginalized or face professional repercussions (Ritchie, 2017). Thus, their roles become symbolic cover for continued structural violence. The presence of Black officers may temporarily reduce visible tensions, but without institutional transformation, their authority functions as a mask rather than a mechanism for justice.
Case Study 3: White Corporate Feminism and the Betrayal of Liberation
Corporate feminism represents a shift from radical, community-centred liberation to individualized, market-based “empowerment.” White, affluent women are elevated into elite positions not to challenge patriarchy or capitalism, but to demonstrate that women, too, can wield institutional power—even to oppressive ends (Fraser, 2013). Corporate feminism prioritizes aesthetic and performative inclusion while ignoring racialized labour exploitation, ecological harm, and systemic inequality (Rottenberg, 2018). As bell hooks (2000) emphasized, feminism without intersectionality and community accountability can easily be co-opted to reinforce the very structures it originally opposed.
This form of power is not transformative but assimilative. Female CEOs of exploitative corporations or administrators of prison systems may be celebrated as feminist trailblazers, even as they uphold violence against poor and racialized populations. Here, gender is weaponized to provide moral cover for neoliberal expansion and control.
The Illusion of Empowerment
Across these examples, the pattern is clear: authority offered without trauma-informed transformation is not liberation—it is strategic containment. These figures are celebrated not for healing communities or reforming systems, but for lending credibility to unjust regimes. Their advancement is conditioned on their ability to suppress dissent and uphold dominant hierarchies. True empowerment cannot be extracted from systems designed to exploit—it must emerge from collective healing and resistance.
Conclusion
Power without healing becomes a form of weaponized identity politics. Whether in the ghettos of Nazi Europe, the militarized streets of America, or the glass-ceilinged boardrooms of global capitalism, marginalized identities have been conscripted into roles that serve domination rather than liberation. If justice is to be realized, authority must be grounded in healing, solidarity, and systemic transformation. Representation without structural change is not progress—it is pacification.
References and Source Summaries
Fraser, N. (2013). Fortunes of feminism: From state-managed capitalism to neoliberal crisis. Verso Books.
Fraser traces the trajectory of feminism from its roots in social justice movements to its incorporation into neoliberal economic structures. She critiques how feminism, once a critique of capitalist patriarchy, has been reframed to align with individualist, market-based values.
hooks, b. (2000). Feminism is for everybody: Passionate politics. South End Press.
hooks argues for an inclusive, intersectional feminism rooted in love and justice. She critiques corporate and mainstream versions of feminism that elevate privileged women while ignoring the needs of poor and marginalized communities.
Levi, P. (1989). The drowned and the saved (R. Rosenthal, Trans.). Vintage International.
Levi reflects on moral ambiguity and survival in the concentration camps, particularly through the concept of the “gray zone.” His analysis of capos explores how coercion, trauma, and complicity become entangled in totalitarian systems.
Ritchie, A. J. (2017). Invisible no more: Police violence against Black women and women of colour. Beacon Press.
Ritchie documents systemic police violence against Black and Indigenous women and gender-diverse people. She also analyzes how diversity in policing does not address core institutional harms, and often conceals them.
Rottenberg, C. (2018). The rise of neoliberal feminism. Oxford University Press.
Rottenberg critiques the evolution of feminism into a market-friendly ideology that emphasizes individual self-optimization, careerism, and resilience at the expense of collective struggle and structural critique.
Tec, N. (1986). When light pierced the darkness: Christian rescue of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. Oxford University Press.
Although Tec primarily focuses on Christian rescue efforts, her work includes insights into Jewish self-policing under Nazi occupation and the psychological burden placed on capos who were forced into morally ambiguous positions.
Vitale, A. (2017). The end of policing. Verso Books.
Vitale argues that police reform efforts, including increasing diversity within departments, fail to address the foundational violence and racism inherent in policing. He promotes abolitionist strategies and systemic alternatives.