“When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.” – African proverb
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A quiet war is being waged to undo the very foundation of black life in America. It is methodical. It is legal. And it is dangerous.
To be black in this country today is to exist inside a system that is actively working to unmake us — not with chains or fire, but with budgets, executive orders, bans, and algorithms. This system is not attacking us with force — it’s erasing us with policy. Not through spectacle, but through strategy.
This is not reform. This is not politics. This is the slow dismantling of everything that sustains our people. The structures. The memory. The institutions. The future.
Look around. They are defunding HBCUs. — the institutions that have educated our people for generations. They are banning DEI — not to improve it, but to erase any acknowledgment that racism exists. They are rewriting curriculums to whitewash history and criminalizing books that tell our children the truth. They are gutting public health programs, cutting Head Start, and ignoring our disproportionate suffering. And they are doing it all under the language of “efficiency,” “innovation,” and “fairness.”
We’ve seen this strategy before. In South Africa. In forgotten villages across the Global South. Displace the people. Destroy their schools. Break their morale. Control the narrative. It’s not new — it’s just wearing American clothes now.
They don’t need tanks when they’ve already taken the textbooks. They don’t need fences when we’ve been boxed in by debt, disinformation, and doubt. They don’t need soldiers when our silence does the work.
This is not a disagreement over policy. It is a campaign to unmake us — our memory, our institutions, our sense of direction.
And they’re succeeding — not because they’re brilliant, but because we’re exhausted.
Let me be clear: this message is for us — because we’re the ones under attack, and we’re the ones who must respond. One of the hardest truths we have to face is that the same system targeting us is also counting on our disorientation. The infighting. The chasing of status. The performative strength. These aren’t just habits — they’re openings. Fractures. And those fractures are being used against us. If we weren’t so fragmented, we’d be far harder to erase. That may not sound good to say out loud, but it’s real, and I don’t believe we can afford to keep sugarcoating it. But we can still come together — only if we’re honest about what’s pulling us apart.
They are not afraid of our outrage. They’re afraid of our unity and our clarity of mind. Because clarity turns into direction — and direction becomes power.
Our children are not just caught in the crossfire — they are the target. Their education. Their identity. Their future. If we lose them, we lose everything. This is not just about survival—it’s about protecting the minds, bodies, and spirits of the next generation from a system designed to erase them before they even fully arrive.
This erasure isn’t loud. It’s legal. It’s strategic. It’s happening through policy, language, and silence. And the most dangerous part? Most of us haven’t even named it yet.
What we’re naming is the slow unmaking of black life itself — our schools, our memory, our children’s future, and our right to exist with clarity and direction.
This isn’t accidental.
It’s engineered.
And now that it’s been named, we’re faced with a choice: pretend we don’t see it — or decide that silence is no longer an option.
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Dr. Timothy D. Goler is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Urban Affairs at Norfolk State University. He also serves as the Director of Research at NSU’s Center for African American Public Policy. A native Clevelander, he hails from the city’s Glenville neighborhood and is co-founder of PolicyBridge.
