The Plantation Is Digital Now
By Eugene Collins
In 2025, systemic oppression no longer wears hoods or badges. It scrolls through feeds, headlines conferences, and markets itself as progress. Today’s plantation doesn’t need/’ chains. It needs representation without revolution — and it finds willing partners in the form of Blackfaces, somewhat polished, praised, and professionally detached. The modern Blackface isn’t a stereotype. They are the most effective weapon against Black liberation today: selected, elevated, and deployed to confuse, divide, and delay real justice.
The Profile of a Digital Overseer
Historically, slave masters chose the bitter, the overlooked, or the resentful to enforce control among the enslaved.
In 2025, the overseer is:
Somewhat educated (Street or Collegiate Experience)
Socially attractive and media-savvy
Politically endorsed but community-detached
They are marketed as proof of progress while the conditions underneath remain unchanged. What They Sell — and What They Cost
Those Blackfaces Today:
Protect systems over people, branding oppression as “reform.”
Use representation as a shield, claiming personal success as proof racism is over.
Silence resistance, labeling movements “Divisive” for polite society.
Trade authenticity for access, shrinking their truth for contracts and comfort.
Each action blunts the edge of true resistance — and extends the life of the systems hurting Black communities.
The Danger: Confusion Over Chains
Oppression today survives not just through force, but through confusion. When injustice speaks through a white mouth, we resist. When it’s repeated by a trusted Black face, we hesitate. That hesitation protects the system more effectively than any whip ever could.
Not Every Success Story Is a Savior
Success does not equal loyalty. Disagreement isn’t betrayal, but when power is used to shield the system harming Black people—for applause, profits, or proximity to power—that isn’t leadership; that’s something else.
The Digital Plantation Reality
Today’s plantation runs on Wi-Fi instead of whips. It celebrates compliant influencers instead of punishing dissenters. It rewards rented loyalty while locking out real change. And while surface victories are paraded across screens, Black communities remain locked out, priced out, and policed in.
Final Word
The greatest threat to Black freedom in 2025 isn’t a badge, a ballot, or a burning cross. It’s the beautiful, Black branded lie: smiling, speaking, and selling systemic survival as freedom. Until we learn to separate from these Blackfaces, the plantation—digital or not—will continue to thrive.
