They May Be Friendly, but They Are Not Your Friends

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.