If you asked me for a Coke and I gave you a Pepsi, and you insisted that you wanted a Coke, and I said that they are both the same, what difference does it make? You would probably get somewhat annoyed. If you ask for a soda and I give you a juice, you would get annoyed. If we are talking about root beer and I insist on talking about Dr Pepper instead, you would be annoyed. If you from NOLA and ask me for a cold drink, and I had you a bottled tea, you’d get annoyed.
It all depends on the language used.
At a glance, they are all cola.
Dark. Carbonated. Sweet. Served cold over ice.
To someone who does not pay attention, Coke, Pepsi, and RC Cola poured in a glass might appear as interchangeable. They occupy the same shelf. They are poured into similar cups. They even compete in the same market category.
But they are not the same drink.
Coke has a specific formula, a specific origin story, a specific distribution history. Pepsi emerged as a rival brand with its own formulation and its own marketing strategy. RC Cola carved out its own niche with a different taste profile and economic positioning.
Similar product class. Different formation.
This is how identity confusion happens.
When people are grouped by visible similarity, they are often collapsed into one category. The assumption becomes: if it looks similar and occupies the same shelf, it must be the same thing.
But formulation matters.
Black Americans are not simply part of a generic “cola” category defined by appearance. They are a specific formulation produced under specific historical pressure inside U.S. borders. Chattel slavery within a single legal jurisdiction. Anti-miscegenation law. Reconstruction collapse. Jim Crow codification. Industrial migration. Urban enclosure. Cultural production under constraint.
That formula produced something distinct.
Caribbean societies were shaped by plantation economies too, but within different colonial administrations, different demographic ratios, different post-emancipation trajectories. African societies contain thousands of distinct ethnic systems consolidated externally under one racial label. Afro-British communities formed through migration into an existing imperial center.
Similar shelf.
Different recipes.
The confusion intensifies when branding enters the equation. If all three beverages are labeled simply “cola,” the distinctions fade. Over time, consumers begin to speak about them as if they were interchangeable. And when one brand dominates global distribution, its flavor becomes treated as the default cola taste.
Then imitation begins.
A different manufacturer produces a drink with a similar color and carbonation. The taste is close enough. Eventually, the distinction blurs further. People forget which formula came first.
But no one confuses Coke’s corporate origin with Pepsi’s. No one pretends RC Cola founded Atlanta. No one claims the formulas are identical.
Yet when it comes to cultural formation, similar appearance often overrides structural differentiation.
The issue is not proximity. It is precision.
Shared racial classification does not equal shared ethnogenesis. Shared aesthetic overlap does not equal identical cultural development. Shared political positioning does not erase distinct historical trajectories.
Coke, Pepsi, and RC Cola may all be cola.
But they are not the same brand.
And pretending they are dissolves origin, formulation, and authorship into a vague category that obscures how each one was made.
It’s all category error
Knockoff brands trying to compete with the one they are imitating
