The article begins with South Africa as a false metaphor for racial progress, clarifying how the removal of apartheid policies ultimately justifies ongoing anti-Black structures that reinforce societal segregation. While educational sectors appropriate movements to decolonise racially disparate systems, minor educational reforms proliferate across the globe under the notion that tinkering towards a better world is transformative. By presenting three US-based examples of symbolic progress and retrenchment that model critical race theory's notion of interest convergence, this article shows how each racialised improvement effort ultimately maintains apartheid conditions. Examples include: (a) The appropriation of the US-based Movement for Black Lives, including a focus on defunding the police instead of abolition and eradication of the school-to-prison pipeline; (b) an appropriation of efforts to increase educator diversity, including a focus on racial representation rather than the removal of structural barriers; and (c) the appropriation of US-based ethnic studies movements, including a dismissal of student demands and denial of the need for ethnic-studies prepared teachers of colour to teach ethnic studies. These systemic appropriations continue apartheid conditions, enabling schools to perpetuate intersectional racism as an intentional outcome, and offer stark warnings about countries aiming to decolonise educational systems while maintaining the infrastructures of anti-Blackness.