By Roy Douglas Malonson
AframNews
https://aframnews.com/
In moments of national tension, history teaches us a painful lesson: when America fractures internally, Black communities are often pulled into conflicts that were never designed to protect us. The warning circulating quietly—and sometimes loudly—across social media and barbershops is simple but urgent: be careful getting caught in a so-called white civil war. Too often, the system is comfortable watching us turn on each other while power remains untouched.
Recent arrests and detentions have intensified that concern. High-profile Black media figures like Don Lemon and Georgia Fort have become flashpoints in a broader struggle over speech, protest, and visibility. Their cases are not identical, but the pattern feels familiar— Black voices scrutinized, restrained, or punished during moments of political upheaval while others move freely in the same space.
This is not about left versus right. It is about understanding how chaos can be weaponized. Historically, when dominant groups fight among themselves, Black people are often used as symbols, shields, or scapegoats. We are pushed
to choose sides, amplify narratives that don’t serve us, or engage in online and street-level battles that leave our communities divided and vulnerable.
The danger is not only physical. It is psychological. Social media thrives on outrage, rewarding the most extreme takes and encouraging infighting. Algorithms don’t care who benefits—only who bleeds attention. In that environment, internal conflict becomes profitable, and unity becomes inconvenient. Meanwhile, policy decisions, court rulings, and power realignments continue quietly in the background.
The arrests of prominent Black figures send a message, intended or not: visibility comes with risk. But the lesson should not be silence. It should be strategy. Our community has always survived by reading the room, organizing deliberately, and refusing to be distracted from long-term goals by short-term spectacle.
We must ask hard questions. Who benefits when Black communities argue endlessly online? Who profits when protests turn inward instead of upward? And who remains untouched when the dust settles?
This moment calls for discernment, not fear. Speak, but with clarity. Organize, but with purpose. Resist being pulled into conflicts framed as inevitable when history shows they are often engineered. Our power has never been
in choosing someone else’s war—it has always been in choosing each other.
