The Illusion of Victory: When Culture Becomes a Trap

What looks like progress may just be programming.

Movies. Concerts. Galas. Viral wins. They flood us with images of Black excellence while quietly stripping away the foundation of real power militants , economic networks, sovereign institutions, and interdependent ownership.

This isn’t new. In the 1960s, the CIA backed symbolic Pan-Africanism to water down the rise of militant economic movements like the Nation of Islam. Today, the formula is the same: make us feel seen so we stop building.

Galas , Movies , Concerts are great distractions but they don’t equal power and progress.

Celebration without sovereignty is a strategy of containment.

And culture without control is still colonized.