No one calls other communities isolationist or extremists for practicing economic loyalty, cultural gatekeeping, or political coordination. Those behaviors are understood as strategy. When Black people pursue the same stability, it is reframed as divisive. That double standard only exists because Black self-sufficiency threatens an economy built on our dependence.

Pick Your Own Cotton (PYOC) begins where movements end. It is not a reaction to oppression. It is a declaration of what comes after it.