(Photo by Sameer Al-Doumy / AFP/Getty Images)

(CNSNews.com) – Blexit founder and former Turning Point USA Communications Director Candace Owens said Friday that President Donald Trump challenged the black community not to accept the status quo of the Democratic Party and to challenge Democrats on what it has done for the black community.



Speaking at the Youth Black Leadership Summit at the White House, Owens said blacks have been “disrespected by Democrats” for decades.



“We have empowered their party, lined the pocket of their politicians, and we have gotten positively nothing in return for our blind allegiance and faithfulness,” she said.



Owens quoted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s comments from a 1964 interview and said his words apply even today.

“I’ve recently begun to immerse myself as I told you all yesterday in old videos and interviews of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and I came across an interview of him from 1964 where he was underscoring the problems that were in black America at that time, and here’s what he mentioned. I will quote: ‘school drop-outs, crime rates, illegitimacy, rioting, and other social evils.’



I find that list to be really interesting, because he spoke that list 55 years ago, and yet today, across all of those categories, we not only have the exact same problems, but the problems have worsened. How is that possible? How is that possible in a society that has experienced so much social progress that we are seeing a decline in the black community. The statistics of illegitimacy, crime rates, and illiteracy have worsened since the time of segregation and Jim Crow.



In that same interview, Dr. King said something that I thought was timeless. He said: ‘It is both socially and morally suicidal to continue a pattern of deploring effects while failing to come to grip with its causes.’ This is reminiscent of Albert Einstein’s fame quote: ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’

Both King’s and Einstein’s words are “timeless,” Owens said, “because for the last 6 decades, black America has found itself in a rhythm of insanity, voting for the same party over and over again and expecting different results.”



“It is in my opinion both socially and morally suicidal that we continue this pattern. Democrats have looked at us in the face, and they have sold us worthlessness. They have told us that we cannot, that we need more government assistance, more handouts,” she said.



“We handed them power, and in return, they further diminished our sense of pride – the most important thing that we had – our sense of pride. We allowed their government to victimize us through the expansion of welfare policies. We allowed them most importantly to remove the fathers from our homes, removing the backbone of our families. They knew, the Democrats knew that without stable households, our children would pursue that paternity elsewhere," Owens said.



"They knew that our children would run to the streets. They knew that our youth would grow up and begin to mirror ourselves after rappers and basketball players rather than men of high intellect and values and more attainable goals. Their media took away the Jeffersons. They took away the Winslows. They took away the Huxtables, and they gave us Love and Hip Hop,” she said, referring to a reality TV show featuring various hip-hop stars.



“They knew exactly what they were doing. They were re-setting our goals, but what they didn’t know, what they could have never predicted was that we might wake up to it one day,” Owens said.



Owens recounted the moment that Trump announced his candidacy and when he challenged the black community to consider him as an alternative to the Democratic Party.