Screenshot : Turning Point USA

Candace Owens, Kanye West’s new bestie, claims that racism is no longer an issue. Was that before or after her family won a lawsuit for $37,500 from the Stamford, Conn., Board of Education as a result of racism? Perhaps the board should ask for a refund.


In 2016, Owens wrote an open letter to the Stamford Advocate sharing how racial slurs and death threats from classmates drove her to an eating disorder and therapy. In this open letter she said, “Those words destroyed me. I held my head high at school, but I went home and I cried every single night.” In another interview she told the Connecticut Post it took her seven years to move past the incident: “[When something like that happens,] you become hostile. You become bitter.”

It seems that a bitter and hostile attitude continues to be an issue for Owens, who now claims that African Americans who cry racism are just a bunch of overly privileged Americans, police brutality is not an issue, former President Bill Clinton is to blame for the mass incarceration of black men (actually, that’s true) and former President Barack Obama is a “spineless coward.”


Her frivolous tirades are rooted in deep ignorance. Breaking down her crudeness would take more than 800 words, but let’s give it a try.

Racism is alive in this country, so much so that white Americans have found themselves arrested and in some cases killed while fighting white supremacy. In her YouTube video “White Guilt,” Owens claims that white people who speak against racial injustice are disingenuous and are only doing so to heal the guilt they feel as white people.

I can only assume she feels this way about protester Heather Heyer, a white woman killed after a car sped through a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, Va. Heyer was protesting racism as white nationalists marched down the streets.

Or maybe Owens is referring to Viola Liuzzo, another white woman and a mother of five who, in 1965, was shot and killed in Alabama by the Ku Klux Klan for transporting African-American protesters between Montgomery and Selma. Owens’ dismissive attitude about racism and its history gives power to racists, who enjoy her bantering because it dismisses any idea that racism still has any influence today.


Owens has no real facts to back up her comments, only her childhood experience and quick Google searches on her phone as she jumps in an Uber to her next interview. She did, however, read a book once.

I would like to think that Owens, who has been sent down to free us from the mental bondage of the Democratic Party, has done some research on these issues, but it’s clear she hasn’t. Had she taken the time to expand her brain space, she would have found that the Department of Justice released multiple reports of police departments engaged in police brutality.


As the former director of communications for the Office of the State’s Attorney in Baltimore City, who served as the spokesperson during the Freddie Gray trials, I recall watching the riots over the death of Gray.

Unlike Ferguson, Mo.’s Police Department, Baltimore’s is predominantly African American, and still the Department of Justice found that even officers of color repeatedly violated the civil rights of city residents, noting, “[Baltimore police] perpetuate and fuel a multitude of issues rooted in poverty and race, focusing law enforcement actions on low-income, minority communities” and encourage officers to have “unnecessary, adversarial interactions with community members.”


Many, like Owens, associate police brutality with white officers and black victims, but in many cities like Baltimore, it is not just about a white officer or black officer; it is about cultural problems within law enforcement abusing its power.

Interesting enough, in 2017, Owens told Morning News Chicago that she worked with a nonprofit organization called Cycling to End Father Absence, which works to eliminate absent fathers from the home. In an interview with Fox News, Owens blamed Bill Clinton for the mass incarceration of black men, which is true but it did not start with him.


It is unfortunate that this girl who is, or was, working to eliminate absent fathers in the home is so busy telling black people to forget about their history that she has missed another opportunity to educate herself on how history has led to the result of absent black fathers.

Once again, she has neglected to research how mass incarceration became a new way to enslave black men, and clearly does not know that President Ronald Reagan’s war on drugs increased federal funding for the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency to combat street crime in black communities.


Funding for the FBI increased from $38 million to more than $181 million, and funding for the DEA increased from $86 million to $1 billion, according to Ian Haney Lopez’s Dog Whistle Politics. The sole purpose of the war on drugs was to incarcerate black men. Meanwhile, Reagan cut funding for drug-treatment programs from $274 million to $57 million.

Owens’ vile, childish name-calling and race-baiting commentary is toxic and misleading. She claims to have a victor mentality and boasts about escaping the grip of liberalism. You would think that Owens, someone who has felt the sting of racism, would have enough self-control to engage with those who are still “blinded” by the dog whistle of the Democratic Party.


Instead, she uses her platform to insult African Americans and cater to white supremacists in hopes of getting a seat on Fox & Friends. She tells black people and families who have lost loved ones to police brutality that racism is in the past, yet it took her seven years, anorexia, a pillow full of tears and a $37,500 payoff to get over being called the n-word.

If Owens sincerely wants to empower the black community to no longer be used as political pawns by the left, she should study how race has played a role in politics and policies meant to indirectly target black communities, and use her platform to share facts and solutions.


Finally, if she is the new Harriet Tubman leading communities of color off the liberal plantation, then she has to find a way to empathize with those who are still trapped under the whip of the Democratic Party.

Real victors educate, not berate.