C.S. Lewis offered this pithy morsel of truth decades ago,
but damn, how the gravity of his words seems
custom-minted for Black America today! The man
might as well have penned it while watching
cable news in 2025 or scrolling through the
latest performative allyship on Instagram. Because now, in this moment - this boiling, roiling,
inescapable moment - where the pretense of
civility has crumbled and the push of equality
has collided headlong with the shove of
denial, it’s clear: friendly smiles are
camouflage for sharpened knives.
Oh yes, the smiling faces are everywhere. They host your
neighborhood BBQs, post those meticulously
curated black squares during moments of
“solidarity,” and spout well-meaning but
toothless platitudes like “I don’t see color”
as if colorblindness has ever stopped a bullet
or rewritten history. They laugh at your
jokes, nod enthusiastically at your stories,
and tell you how much they just love Beyoncé -
because that, of course, is the universal
shortcut to understanding 400 years of
systemic oppression.
But don’t be fooled. Those $1.99 smiles are brittle as
cheap glass, and the cracks show when the
pressure rises. When your existence challenges
their comfort. When “equity” means their pie
slice might shrink. When “reparations” are
more than just a buzzword. That’s when the
TEMU bought knives come out - metaphorically,
but make no mistake, they cut deep. A
backhanded comment at work, a clutching of
pearls at the protest, a “concerned”
conversation about how “these things take
time.”
And the betrayals aren’t always loud. Sometimes they’re
whispered - veiled in bureaucracy, cloaked in
“colorblind” policies, hidden behind a facade
of progress. The friendly faces sit on school
boards that gerrymander Black children out of
opportunities. They vote for bills that uphold
“law and order” but lock Black men behind
bars. They cheer for Serena on the court but
flinch when a Black woman raises her voice in
a boardroom.
C.S. Lewis wasn’t wrong, but even he might not have
imagined just how spectacularly true his words
could become in this era of manufactured
smiles and deadly quiet betrayals. So, let’s
be clear: friendly is not the same as a
friend. A friend doesn’t just say, “I see you”
- they fight for you, alongside you, with you,
until the systems that oppress you are
dismantled and obliterated.
Because if we keep mistaking friendliness for friendship,
we’ll keep falling for those smiling faces
while they sharpen their knives behind our
backs. And frankly, Black America doesn’t have
time for another blade in the back.
Let me be sharp enough to cut glass and blunt enough to
leave a big-ass dent: The Democratic Party,
with its aging Clinton-Biden cohort, is a
mausoleum of “Moderates,” Ray-Gun Democrats,
Dixiecrats, and DINOs - Democrats in Name
Only. These relics and pretenders are
political holograms: fake, phony, plastic, and
so transparently hollow they might as well be
made of cellophane.
“They may be friendly, but they are
not your friends.”
Their moral compass? Broken, shattered, busted, Their
ethical backbone? About as sturdy as Gumby and
Pokey after a sauna session. The “principled
spine” they claim to have wouldn’t survive a
mild breeze, let alone the imperfect storm of
injustice roaring across the land. These are
the people who shake your hand with one palm
and pass the buck with the other.
And then there’s the tragedy of coupling these spineless
frauds - the alleged allies who are as
reliable as wet cardboard - with our
unmistakable enemies. You know who I’m talking
about, the ones who outright tell us they
despise us. The oppressors who have never
wavered in their mission to remind Black
Americans that we are not just unwelcome, but
unwanted in this so-called “land of the free.”
We are living in hostile territory, a nation
that sees us as the only forced immigrants in its star-spangled storybook - a place where
“liberty and justice for all” is more of a
cruel inside joke than a creed.
And to all those grinning, hand-wringing apologists out
there: We’re not buying it anymore. And here
we sit, here we sit, at the mercy of a madman,
will his greed win out and he will not destroy
the fragil patchwork diversity of this
polarized country or will his racism win out
and this nation start down a dark road?
The betrayal isn’t just in Washington; it’s corporate.
Look no further than corporate America -
Amazon, Boeing, Jack Daniels, Ford,
Caterpillar, Harley-Davidson, United Airlines,
John Deere, Coors Brewing, Lowe’s, Walmart,
McDonald’s, Toyota. These are just a sampling of the big names that wave the banner of equality at
the company picnic, only to quietly pack up
shop when it’s time to put skin in the game.
Betrayal isn’t a bug in their operation - it’s
the whole damn system.
And while we’re on this road trip through duplicity, let’s
swing by Trump country. The man didn’t just
carve into the Democratic base; he took a
chainsaw to it. He seduced blue-collar workers
and hacked away at the coalition of the
ascendant like a mad lumberjack on a Trump
Vodka binge. The numbers don’t lie:
● Trump snagged 13% of the Black vote in 2024, compared to
John McCain’s pitiful 4% in 2008 against
Obama.
● He captured 46% of the Latino vote, while McCain managed
just 31%.
● He claimed 43% of voters under 30, obliterating McCain’s
32%.
● He won a staggering 56% of voters without a college degree
- whereas Obama once carried that group.
● The baffling percentage of White women, over 50%, who back
a party that sees them as 3rd class
handmaidens. With a more than qualified woman
to vote for, and Roe B wading in ashes, they
sadly voted for a man with Trump’s back alley
credentials.
And who stood in line to cheer for the man backed by the
Klan? A rogues’ gallery of minstrels and
useful idiots: Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson,
Mike Tyson, Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne, Kodak
Black, Waka Flocka Flame, Stacey Dash, Dennis
Rodman, Kanye West. Let’s call them what they
are: performers of the shuck-and-jive for
White conservatives who barely see them as
human. They are tools - props - in the MAGA playbook, helping White America sleep
better at night while it clutches its
Confederate quilt. Is it because they are so
selfish, or so dumb? Is it greed or stupidity?
What’s for sure - “they may be friendly, but they are not
your friends.”
And yet, where is the Democratic resistance in the face of
this Fourth Reich redux? Nowhere to be found.
They’ve traded their swords for spoons,
scooping up whatever crumbs of compromise the
MAGA-GOP deigns to toss their way. This is the
politics of accommodation at its most
pathetic. Instead of fighting tooth and nail
against the apartheid state unfurling before
our eyes, the Democratic establishment will
likely roll over, whispering the same empty
reassurances that allowed the Confederacy to
rise from the ashes the first time.
Michelle Obama and Nancy Pelosi, declining to attend this
diabolical clown’s inauguration are the
examples of resistance we should emulate and
imitate.
It’s a page straight out of history: America
underestimated Hitler’s sadism, and we’re
watching the same naivety replay with MAGA.
After the Civil War, the North let the South
off easy, paving the way for the Confederate
resurgence that now marches unabashedly under
the crimson banner of MAGA GOP. Meanwhile,
Germany after WWII didn’t mince words or
actions - they shamed, punished, and
ostracized the Nazis. Here? Mainstream White
America handed the Confederacy a makeover and
called it “heritage.”
Jefferson Davis might not walk among us in the flesh, but
his spirit thrives in MAGA hats and
Confederate flags. This is the rebirth of a
crimson tide, and unless someone grows a spine
- Democrats, we’re looking at you - it’ll
sweep over us all.
Friendly faces? Fair weather friends? Hardly. This is a
hostile land, and it’s high time we stop
pretending otherwise.
