The Devil in Candace Owens

The right-wing diva keeps doubling, tripling down on self-loathing

Every disadvantaged, disenfranchised group of people have outliers.

People who would say anything, do anything, to be accepted by the majority.

Say anything, do anything to make money.

Say anything, do anything to survive.

For Black people, they were the people that informed White slave owners about impending slave escapes or revolts, hoping that they would secure their own freedom, or at least be looked upon favorably by their masters.

They were the people who spoke or acted against the Civil Rights Movement because “things will be better one day,” “you have to go along to get along,” or some such nonsense.

They were and are the people who continued to vote Republican long after it was against their best interest to do so.

They are the people who say that racism is mostly imaginary, and if it exists, White people are its chief victims.

They are the people who never have anything positive to say about any Black person unless its someone who shares their amoral, twisted vision of race relations.

They are people like Candace Owens.

Except she is worse than most.

She has greater visibility, a larger platform, in short, more opportunity to inflict maximum damage.

And Black people aren’t always the target for her innate cruelty.

Take her recent defense of Kyrie Irving’s antisemitic statements. On one hand, she rightfully questioned why Amazon should sell the “documentary” in question.

Of course, on the other hand, she said,

“A little reminder, if you actually go on Amazon right now, you can order and read 'Mein Kampf.' It is not an endorsement of Adolf Hitler to read a historical textbook. It just is not, right? And the idea that we should be censoring all this information, and no one should see it because it hurts some group of people, to me, just does not gel well with our First Amendment rights.”

Since when does the ravings of a maniac responsible for the deaths of six million Jews become a textbook?

The Protocols of The Elders of Zion is not a textbook.

The Turner Diaries is not a textbook.

They are simply rambling, shambling, hodgepodges of racist, antisemitic, xenophobic falderol.

And First Amendment rights can never, ever, supersede the common good.

Both Amazon and Owens know that the common good and good commerce can widely diverge.

She also defended fellow antisemite Kanye West for his incendiary comments.

But as indicated by her wearing “White Lives Matter” apparel on stage with West, she spends most of her waking hours trying to defend White Supremacy to the detriment of Blacks.

Her latest ramblings include a defense of the Confederacy.

She recently said

"…Thoughts on the Confederate flag. I do not see a problem with people whose family members died fighting for that flag to be able to wave it high. It is historical and the idea that your son or daughter went and marched in a war – that people are just so stupid they think 'they were fighting for slavery' – those people who fought were piss poor and never had a slave a single day in their life."

And

"They fought for the South and their sons signed up, went to war, and now they're told that even having the flag or having any pride for their dead relatives is something that is wrong and dirty and backwards and racist and associated with slavery. People are so ignorant about slavery and the numbers on slavery. I mean, the idea that everyone had slaves in the south is so stupid. It was the incredibly uberwealthy. It'd be like people believing that everyone today had a yacht.”

"I mean, it's just so – I'm just going to stop ranting about it. The answer is people should be allowed to keep their Confederate flags and wave them because it represents an element of history."

The only correct statement in all of this is that it was a rant.

A lying, self-abasing rant.

Yes, Candace, the war was fought over slavery. Almost every slave state’s article of succession states that their reason for leaving the Union and going to war was about slavery.

Mississippi’s declaration of succession stated:

“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world.”

“…none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun … and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.” 

My home state of Georgia’s declaration:

“For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slaveholding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery…This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war.”

Texas:

“In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color…”

No Candace, the Civil War was waged because prejudiced White people thought it “debasing” to consider all men being equal. In their mind, there was an invisible “White” inserted in the Declaration of Independence’s “all men are created equal.” Of course, at that time, only landowners were allowed to vote.

Which brings us to her next specious point, which is that the Confederacy’s descendants should be proud of their ancestors, most of whom didn’t own slaves.

There were many foolish poor White Southerners, lured by the tripe of states’ rights and misplaced regional pride, who fought the war. By the war’s end, many had deserted, not because they suddenly felt kinship with their Black brethren, or they had any less regional pride, but because they knew a hopeless and futile situation when they saw one and refused to become a casualty of it.

But Owens’ coup de gras is how she attempts to trivialize the worst thing that ever happened to Black Americans.

She compares owning slaves to owning a yacht.

The fact that anyone owned other human beings is a disgrace, but to attempt to mitigate this by saying that there were fewer slaves than generally believed and that even the nature of slavery itself in questionable.

How much does a Black person have to hate their own race to say such things?

Or how venal and self-serving does a Black person have to be to say those things when she doesn’t even believe what she’s saying?

We know this about slavery:

·        600,000 slaves were imported from Africa to the US

·        The 1860 census shows that enslaves Black number almost 4 million, which was 89% percent of Black people living in the US

We also know from slave narratives, diaries, and recorded interviews with former slaves that the genteel slavery portrayed in fiction like “Gone With The Wind” was more like “Here With The BS.”

Slaves were overworked, raped, tortured, terrorized, and brutalized.

Families were separated. Light-skinned and darker skinned Blacks were pitted against each other. Livestock was treated better than human beings whose sole crime was being the wrong color.

But Candace Owens can’t be bothered by trivialities like historical records and factual data. She’d rather operate like the White Supremacists who deny that slavery was brutal, and who maintain to this day that Black people would be better off mastered.

Candace Owens has a master worse than Voldemort, Sauron, and Darth Vader combined.

You can call it whatever you like.

The devil.

Aunt Jemima syndrome.

Self-hatred.

Mammon.

Whatever it is that makes humans act against their own long-term self-interest.

That makes them miscalculate their ability to escape their blackness

Again.

And again.

And again.

Whatever it is that perpetuates evil and gives those who hate us aid and comfort

Is what controls her.

Whatever “it” is has her firmly and securely in its grasp.

And one can’t help but think that it will never let her go.

Nor will she ever have the sense to pry herself from its clutches.