It’s Time to Mute Candace Owens
Racist Rhetoric Spouted by a Black Person Is Still Racist Rhetoric
Even as people across the world united against police brutality and racism following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, black conservative commentator Candace Owens took to social media Wednesday to unleash another of her shallow, pseudo-intellectual tirades. Her ignorant pandering to a largely white conservative base was on full display. Again. Over the course of 18 minutes, Owens lambasted Democrats for allegedly upholding Floyd as a hero and martyr and proceeded to unleash a barrage of inaccurate and misleading information concerning the black community. She then upped the ante by way of an interview with conservative radio host Glenn Beck, in which she further denigrated Floyd and parroted racist tropes certain to appeal to Beck’s audience.
That our self-professed “least racist” president retweeted Owens’ interview is reason enough to definitively address her simplistic analysis and superficial assertions regarding the state of affairs in black America. Donald Trump stands poised to replace Omarosa Manigault with his latest black trophy, another of his “African-Americans over here.” Lest we forget, prior to her own “Blexit” from the White House, Omarosa was the highest-ranking token black official in the West Wing. She had been so “comfortable” in her work environment that she felt compelled to tape every interaction with every person of importance in the White House, including Donald Trump. For that, she was dubbed a “crazed, crying lowlife” and “dog.” Owens should learn from the “Omarosa Chronicles” — step out of line for “disloyalty” and you will eventually see who you really are in their eyes.
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The response within the black community to Owens has largely been a collective eye-roll — or no response. “Just ignore her. Why waste the energy or give her additional attention?” Certainly, I understand the inclination to ignore Owens. However, her latest diatribe necessitates that a line be drawn in the sand. If we have learned anything within America’s current political climate, it is that a lie repeated often enough becomes “truth” — propaganda tactics often attributed to Nazi Joseph Goebbels, which we have seen repeatedly at play within the Trump administration.
Footballer and comedian Ryan Davis was among the few within the black community who quickly took to social media to debunk Owens’ fallacies. Davis did an excellent job. However, as an attorney, trained to identify and challenge the false premises underlying seemingly articulate logical arguments, I, too, must challenge Owens. Moreover, as a mixed-race woman whose lighter skin permits me a degree of privilege in white spaces denied to many of my darker brothers and sisters, I refuse to let silence on my part imply consent.
So, for the conservative Beckys in the back who love sharing Owens’ posts and enthusiastically point to her as “evidence” that they’re not racist because, well, “See, a black person said it, too,” let me be abundantly clear: Just because a black person repeats racist rhetoric doesn’t mean it isn’t still racist rhetoric. There were black people during slavery who turned on other enslaved black persons to curry favor with their white masters. Similarly, during the Holocaust, there were Jews in concentration camps who were appointed by Nazi officers to lord over other Jews in the camp in return for extra food or favors. Siding with the oppressor has always been a survival mechanism for some.
From Owens’ history, it is clear that she is an opportunist. By her own admission, she “became a conservative overnight.” She felt slighted by progressives for a controversial website she launched that would have violated privacy rights and politically weaponized doxxing. That she received the support of a few prominent alt-right voices like Milo Yaiannopoulos and Mike Cernovich seemingly steered her toward a far-right bent. Thereafter, she catapulted herself into the public domain as one of conservative white America’s few black allies. Because she is considering a run for public office, she can no longer be discounted as a “fringe” element in the deep end of the far right. A self-labeled “proud Uncle Tom,” Owens is also revealing herself to be a naive, self-hating black woman who mirrors conservative white America’s bigoted talking points back to them, confirming their own biases.
In return for her allegiance and allowing herself to be tokenized and exploited by the Right, Owens seemingly gets a sense of approval and validation (in addition to a few paychecks) in being held up as the “exception” in white spaces — the “good,” docile, palatable type of black person who doesn’t challenge them or call them on their bullshit, who “doesn’t even seem black.”
All of which leads me back to Owens’ latest video. She begins by paraphrasing one of her favorite conservative black authors, Shelby Steele, stating that the black community is unique because it is the only community and culture that lifts up its worst and caters to the bottom denominator of society. This, she said, with a straight face as a supporter of Donald Trump. As Ryan Davis also pointed out, she lives in a country that celebrates holidays that honor genocide and theft of indigenous land, that venerates slave owners on its currency, and that erects statues in honor of racist white people who fought in a civil war for their “right” to own other human beings. And since she specifically mentioned how “hard-pressed” one would be to find Jewish people—also my people — who champion those in their community who are “up to no good,” what of the Jewish enablers of Harvey Weinstein, and Bernie Madoff, and Jeffrey Epstein, and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen? Or the fact that the liturgical music of Shlomo Carlbach — a renowned composer who was also an alleged sex offender — still plays reverently in synagogues around the world because, well, “Tradition!”
But before going further down the rabbit hole extrapolating the absurdity of Owens’ statement, let’s look at the foundation of her premise: that the black community — and the media — has uplifted Floyd as a hero and a martyr, “the best of what black America has to offer.”
I have paid close attention from the outset to the coverage of George Floyd, and nowhere have I seen anyone claiming that Floyd was a saint. Not CNN. Not the Reverend Al Sharpton. No one. The notion that we “Say his name” and march and demand justice for his family because we think he was some kind of upstanding choir boy is asinine. It’s easy to demand justice for the well-liked. It’s how society treats its “throw-aways” that tests the mettle of its ideals.
Especially outrageous is the hypocrisy of the same people preaching redemption and being “saved by grace” — those who pour heaping piles of said grace upon Trump to cover his many indiscretions and criminal behavior that led to his impeachment. Somehow, they feel compelled every time an unarmed black man dies to re-litigate his entire criminal history in the court of public opinion. “He had it coming,” they say. Owens tries to sidestep this double standard by invoking her belief in second chances, but not in “third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth chances.” Well, that’s funny. As of April 14, 2020, Owens’ idol, Donald Trump, has told 18,000 false or misleading claims during his time in office — his “chances” have not expired. Moreover, Owens misses the point entirely. No one is debating that Floyd had a criminal record. Floyd’s record could have been 100 pages long. But he had already served his time and paid whatever debt he allegedly owed to society. He was not proven guilty of anything that day — or for several years prior. Moreover, not every unarmed black man killed by the police had a criminal record.
This is not to say that the allegations leading to Floyd’s arrest the day he died were not true. He may have been high as a kite on fentanyl and meth. But drug addiction is a disease affecting millions of Americans of every race, color, and creed. After all, there is an opioid crisis in white, middle America, is there not? He may have tried to pass a fake $20 bill. Or he might have simply received the offending bill as change from a prior transaction and was unaware of its inauthenticity. We’ll never know, will we? For 8 minutes and 46 seconds, an overzealous white officer took one look at Floyd and determined he was already guilty until proven innocent. He then weighed his life — his black life — on the scales of societal importance and found it wanting. But his black life did matter, and that truth — not his alleged misdeeds — is what is being championed, and emblazoned on T-shirts, and proclaimed at rallies around the world.
While Owens and her ilk would love to deflect from the conversation about racism and police brutality by making the protests all about Floyd, this all-too-familiar scene plays on repeat in black communities all across America. That Owens has lived a relatively sheltered life and ignorantly dismisses racially motivated police brutality as a “myth” — a “fake narrative” that “rarely ever happens in America” — is a slap in the face to the families of Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin, Sam Dubose, Philando Castile, Terence Crutcher, Alton Sterling, Jamar Clark, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Paul O’Neal, Sandra Bland, Botham Jean, Breonna Taylor, and the countless other black lives that haven’t become high-profile, publicized hashtags.
Owens may have to learn this lesson the hard way. But when we say, “Black lives matter,” we mean all black lives — even yours, Candace. And while your invitation to the cookout may have been revoked, if you found yourself under the knee of an officer, we would want justice for you, too.
Owens’ apples-to-oranges comparison of police killings to deaths caused by medical malpractice is a red herring. Her rant about the disproportionate rate of violent black crime is propagated by a litany of dubious statistics, loosely strung together from a collection of right-wing news and opinion websites like The Daily Wire that provide little or no corroborating links or footnotes for substantiation. Moreover, her focus on murders and other violent crimes is an obfuscation. The majority of black people stopped by police are pulled over for minor infractions. But even taking such statistics at face value, it doesn’t take rocket science to see why black people are convicted at higher rates than white people. Over 97 percent of all criminal convictions result from a plea bargain and do not make it to trial. Many are not even guilty. The fact is that minority communities have disproportionately less access to legal resources, and are often encouraged to make a deal with the prosecution instead of taking their chances at trial.
“I’ve seen police officers up charges because it would go on their record for promotion,” asserted Cyprianne Rookwood, a former New York prosecutor turned criminal defense attorney. “And when you ask them why, they say, ‘You can do whatever you want — drop it down, it doesn’t matter to me at this point.’ I’ve seen white kids get citation after citation dismissed for marijuana charges while black kids get arrested and now have records that forever brand them as criminals. I’ve seen police use shady tactics to get forced corroborations against people they want to go after by harassing and charging so-called ‘informants’ till they cooperate, and some of these prosecutors protect them. I was forced to resign because I refused to play the game. It’s an institutional problem that must be addressed at the root.”
There are also biased judges and juries. Reference Clarence Moses-EL, a now-exonerated black Denver man sentenced to 48 years for rape, in part because a white woman said his name came to her in a dream. Compare Moses-EL to rich, well-connected white men like Brock Turner, who can afford the best lawyers and whom judges feel deserve leniency in spite of committing three counts of felony sexual assault. Turner was sentenced to only six months in jail and, worse, released after three. “The opposite of poverty is not wealth; it’s justice,” said renowned defense attorney and criminal justice reform advocate Bryan Stevenson — the subject of the recent film Just Mercy.
Moreover, Owens naively suggests the best way for black people to avoid police brutality is to limit their interactions with the police. But such interactions are not always of their making. Just this weekend, I was grocery shopping at my local Walmart when I witnessed an elderly white man threaten to call the police on a black female employee because she respectfully told him, per store policy, that he needed to keep his mask on or exit the store. These Amy Cooper types know exactly what they’re doing when they threaten to call the police on black people who challenge them on their shit. But their time is now up.
Owens further claims that the black community is asking white people to “bow down and apologize and do all these things for us” because “we don’t do personal responsibility in our community.” But to paraphrase a line from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “[We] ask no favor for our [race]. “All [we] ask of our [white] brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” Owens’ arguments perpetuate false racial stereotypes about the black community. Minimal, cursory research reveals countless black icons and leaders seeking to uplift and empower the black community — from Common to John Legend to Lebron James to Denzel Washington to Michelle Obama to ordinary, everyday leaders lauded by CNN as heroes.
It’s time to mute Candace Owens. The ignorance she spouts is nothing new, only packaged in melanin to appeal to closet racists and deflect from the systemic issues that need to be redressed in this country in order to bring about real justice. Therefore, #StopSharingHerShit.
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