The Game Is Rigged, and the only Cheat Code is Community

We're Still Unpacking The Halftime Show, So Let's Talk About How The Game Is Rigged

Why is the System Rigged?

The system is rigged because it needs to be in order to keep power concentrated at the top.

This isn’t about individual racism. This is about control.

• A system of “haves” and “have-nots” cannot function unless there’s a permanent underclass—someone who is always at the bottom, exploited, blamed, and kept struggling.

• Black people were forced into that role from the beginning. Enslavement wasn’t just about labour—it was about creating an economic and social order where Blackness = disposability, while whiteness = power.

• Anti-Blackness is the foundation of th

  e system. It justifies exploitation, wealth hoarding, and state violence—and as long as Black people are held at the bottom, the system can do the same to everyone else, just at different levels.

What Does Anti-Blackness Create?

1. A Justification for Exploitation: If you can convince people that Black suffering is normal, you can justify poverty, wage theft, and economic inequality for everyone.

   • Example: Slavery built the economy. Then when slavery ended, Black labor was still exploited—first through sharecropping, then through mass incarceration.

   • Once the system normalized that level of exploitation, it expanded—pushing poor white people, immigrants, and Indigenous people into different forms of economic struggle.

2. A Distraction from the Real Problem: The system needs poor white people, immigrants, and other marginalized groups to focus on Black people as the “problem” instead of the ruling class.

   • Example: After slavery, poor white workers were struggling too—but instead of uniting with Black workers, they were told that their enemy was “free Black labour” taking their jobs.

   • This stopped multi-racial labour movements from forming and kept both groups fighting for scraps instead of demanding more from the people hoarding resources.

3. A Testing Ground for Oppression: What the system is allowed to do to Black people first, it eventually does to everyone.

   • Police evolved from slave catchers → Now, they brutalize anyone who is poor, unhoused, or viewed as “disposable.”

   • Prison labor replaced slavery → Now, immigrants and poor white people are caught in wage slavery too.

   • Surveillance was used to target Black organizers → Now, governments surveil activists, journalists, and anyone who challenges power.

So How Does This Connect to the “Culture Cheat Code”?