Digital Blackface is Real and It’s Already in Your Feed

I had a genuinely good morning. Productive. Grounded. The kind of morning that makes you feel like you’re moving in alignment. And then I did what most of us do somewhere between the second cup of tea and the first real task of the day. I scrolled.

And there he was. A Black man with silver locs and a baritone that felt like it knew something. Sitting with authority. Speaking what sounded like healing. Words that landed with the kind of weight you associate with an elder who has actually lived something. I paused. I listened. I kept scrolling and found two, three more just like him.

But something was off. Not in the words exactly. In the tone beneath the words. In the texture of the knowing. My intuition, which I have learned to treat as data, started sending signals I couldn’t ignore.

So I took a screenshot. Ran it by my AI collaborator. And got back a quiet, thorough confirmation of what my body already suspected. It wasn’t real. None of it was.

And this wasn’t the first time.

I have seen Rastaman elders dispensing herbal wisdom with eyes that never quite blinked right. I have seen Black women in their seventies dancing with a joy that was just slightly too perfect, moving in a way that felt assembled rather than lived. I have seen wise folk sharing ancestral teachings with the cadence of someone who had studied the cadence but never inhabited the lineage.

Every time, something in me said: this feels so right and so wrong at the same time.

That feeling has a name. It’s the feeling of being mimicked by something that does not love you.

What we are witnessing is a digital iteration of one of the oldest American traditions. Blackface was never really about the paint. It was about extracting the cultural product while erasing the actual people.

Taking the aesthetic and abandoning the accountability. Performing the relationship while pocketing the profit. What is happening now operates on the same logic, just without the costume and with a global reach that the original architects of that tradition could never have imagined.

Someone, somewhere, possibly with no connection to the diaspora whatsoever, has identified that Black and brown communities carry a deep and legitimate hunger for healing, for wisdom, for being truly seen.

And they have built a machine to monetize that hunger. Not to feed it. To mine it.

This is why I am writing today.

Not to make you afraid. Fear is not a sustainable navigation system. But I do want you awake.

Pay attention. Not just to what sounds good, but to what feels sourced. Wisdom that comes from lived experience has a particular texture. It doesn’t just name the wound. It knows where the wound came from. It knows what the room smelled like. It knows the specific weight of that particular grief. AI can study the pattern of healing language. It cannot replicate the scar tissue that gives that language its authority.

And I want to be clear about something, because my integrity requires it.

I am a love-hate fan of AI. Genuinely. I use it. I collaborate with it. I am consistently blown away by what it makes possible for creators, healers, educators, and innovators who have historically been locked out of the tools of production. If we approach this technology with consciousness and genuine responsibility, I believe we can co-design a world that lives beyond what any of us can currently imagine. I mean that. I am not a hater. I am not afraid of the future.

But I am afraid of the past repeating itself inside a new machine.

Because here is what I also see. The same technology that can liberate can just as easily be used to run the oldest playbooks in new costumes. Jim Crow had a dress code. Digital exploitation does not. What we are now watching is the integration of our deepest cultural archetypes, our elders, our griots, our healers, our embodied joy, with a modern swag and a rizz so precisely calibrated it bypasses your critical thinking and lands directly in your longing.

That is not innovation. That is manipulation with better lighting. It is Jezebel 3.0. It is emasculation with a baritone voice and silver locs. It is the stereotype dressed up in ancestral clothing, seducing your unconscious while someone who does not know your name collects the check.

The technology is not the villain. The intention behind it is.

This is why I am writing today. Not to make you afraid. Fear is not a sustainable navigation system. But I do want you awake.

People of the diaspora have been disappeared and silenced for a very long time. Our stories have been extracted, repackaged, and sold back to us in forms that profit everyone except us. Technology has now made it possible to do this without even a human face attached to the operation.

That is not progress. That is the same wound with a new delivery mechanism.

And yes, I want to say this clearly: apply this same discernment to me. I have letters behind my name. I have years of clinical training, lived experience, and genuine love for this community behind every word I publish.

But do not take that on faith alone. Read critically. Ask questions. Notice how things land in your body, not just your mind. Your intuition is a diagnostic tool and it was given to you for exactly this moment.

Not everyone creating content in this space has pure intentions. Some people have identified that there is a significant financial opportunity in the healing economy of the diaspora, and they have positioned themselves accordingly, whether or not they have ever sat with the pain they claim to understand.

Take your time. Use your discernment. Research what you are given before you build your wellness on it. And if something feels so right and so wrong at the same time, trust that feeling. It is trying to tell you something true.

Your healing deserves a real source.