Blackout

by Candace Owens

  Black America, much like the Jews in the Old Testament, has been liberated, but led somehow back into the wilderness by the false prophets of the Democrat Party.

  There is much discussion in the Bible regarding false prophets and hypocrites. In the Book of Lamentations (2:14), commonly ascribed to the prophet Jeremiah, he writes, “Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen for you oracles that are false and misleading.” What greater description could be penned of many of the leaders of the black community to this day? The vision of black America that has been provided by leaders such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson (both ministers) seeks to deceive, not restore the fortunes of our community.

  In Matthew 7:15, Jesus warns us to “[b]eware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” These are the race-baiting hustlers who saw an opportunity after Dr. King’s dream was realized. They are those who today stir up racial hatred and resentment for their own vanity and achievement; the very men who are supposed to lead the great saving of black America and who have been given the opportunity to do real good among our people have instead used the opportunity to further their own selfish ambitions. But indeed, it is for the scribes and Pharisees, the equivalent ancient leaders of the Hebrew community, that Jesus reserves his harshest words for:

  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!… For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee!… For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanliness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.… You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town. (Matthew 23: 23–34)

  It feels good to be reminded that the harshest of judgments will be reserved for false leaders who signal virtue but live opposingly. For those who preoccupy themselves with preaching perfection because it fills them with self-righteousness and self-importance, their day will come. Today we see so many of these people: millionaires preaching against wealth, those who fly privately while lecturing about the environment, those with armed guards, demanding we give up our guns. Hypocrisy is the game of the Left.

  The story of black America is a long narrative of faith. Even in our darkest moments of history, our hope was always invested in the world to come. Much like the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, we have been on a great journey of redemption. We must put faith back at the heart of America, both black and white. Saving America means rescuing the Judeo-Christian principles that defined her. The increasing drift of secularism within our nation holds dangerous precedent for moral codes and values to be rewritten in the image of man, rather than that of God.

  More than ever, we must remember the words of MLK:

  I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

  It is once again time to have faith.

  10 ON CULTURE

  It is difficult to imagine my grandfather, who exclusively wears khakis and a collar every day—feeling anything but mystified by the popular trends of black America today.

  The Chinese philosopher Confucius, who lived between 551 and 479 B.C, wrote, “If one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer.”

  The music of my grandfather’s young adulthood was largely imprinted by Motown Records, a black-owned rec-ord label with a score of soulful vocalists who sang pre-dominantly about topics of love and family. His favorite group was the Temptations, composed of five black men out of Detroit, who always wore suits when they performed. Growing up, my grandfather and all eight of his brothers would perform dance routines to their many songs at our family reunions. During the famed annual “Owens Talent Show,” the Owens brothers would line up across the stage and show off their coordinated moves to classics like “Just My Imagination” or “My Girl”—a favorite song of mine to this day:

  I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day

  And when it’s cold outside, I’ve got the month of May

  Such lyrics remind me of a black community, spirit, and culture that I never truly knew but am deeply nostalgic for: my grandfather’s black America.

  If what Confucius speculated about music was true, then there can be no wonder about the state of black affairs today. At the time of writing, the number one song on the hip-hop billboard charts is called “Savage,” performed by an artist named Meghan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé.

  Here is the opening:

  I’m that bitch (yeah)Been that bitch, still that bitch

  Is it reasonable to assume that the black community which thrust the Temptations to the top of billboard charts, holds the same values and beliefs as the ones who today boosted Meghan Thee Stallion to the number one spot? Of course not. The truth is that in just a few short decades, black culture hasn’t just transformed, but devolved.

  Our culture today is much about achieving a status of “coolness” through the slow decay of morality: less clothing, more profanity, less education. We are fundamentally anti-establishment, and anti-conformity. An artist would be hard-pressed to land a number one track singing about family and love. Those days of black America are long gone.

  The Democrats, of course, know this, and view black culture as their preferred means to garner votes around election time. Their candidates follow the belief that if they “act black,” meaning, speak in broken English and regurgitate popular black phrases—it will be enough to earn respect (and votes!) from the black community. And in most instances, they have been proven correct.

  A cringe-inducing scenario played out in 2016 when then–presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stopped by the number one hip-hop radio show, the Breakfast Club. Her objective there was painfully obvious: Make these black people believe I’m cool, so they’ll vote for me. It is important to note that at the time of her visit, Beyoncé had released a wildly popular song, titled “Formation,” in which the singer utters the phrase “I have hot sauce in my bag, swag”!

  Certain to have been brought up to speed on this by her many staffers before she went into the interview, Clinton proved too eager to display her cultural hipness. When asked by the show hosts to name one item that she always keeps with her in her purse, the Democrat nominee perked up and without missing a beat blurted, “hot sauce!”

  The hosts laughed nervously, apparently caught off guard by such a purposed response to a softball question. One of the hosts then clarified to her, “I just want you to know that people are going to see this and say ‘Okay, she’s pandering to black people again.’ ” It was a perfect opportunity for Clinton to say she was joking and to answer the question in earnest. Instead, she asked the host, “Is it working?”

  It was a shameless moment that drew back the curtain on the lowly perception of blacks held by left-wing politicians. In retrospect, the exchange offered a preview of how Hillary would continue her campaign for the black vote; she never discussed policy. She never discussed how she intended to improve inner cities. She did however—just four days before Americans headed to the polls on November 8—opt to have Beyoncé and Jay-Z perform at her campaign rally. She had dutifully received the support of black cultural icons, and in exchange, she fully expected black Americans to hand in their votes.

  And four years later in 2020, Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden would pick
up where she left off.

  In a satellite interview for the same hip-hop radio show, Joe Biden spoke with the nationally syndicated talk-radio host and two-time New York Times bestselling author Charlamagne tha God. Charlamagne is a deeply respected leader in the black community who has proven unafraid to ask Democrat contenders tough questions. After a rather contentious fifteen minutes in which Biden did not let Charlamagne ask many questions, Biden announced that he had run out of time. Charlamagne told the presidential hopeful that he still had more questions, and asked that the candidate commit to a longer, in-person interview in the future.

  In response, Joe Biden looked into the camera and declared, “ ‘If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

  You ain’t black. Just like that.

  Rarely had any Democrat hopeful been so honest. While it has been abundantly clear to most conservatives that the Democrats do not believe blacks need to have their political questions answered—no one had ever risked communicating that sentiment so plainly—at least not publicly.

  Biden’s declaration clarified that for black Americans voting Democrat has come to be viewed not only as an expectation but as a condition of blackness. Left-wing candidates feel so certain that there is no variety of thought or experience among blacks that they are comfortable publicly stripping us of our identity, should we offer any objection to the status quo.

  It is likely that Charlamagne had a few questions pertaining to Biden’s problematic record on racial justice while he served in the Senate, particularly surrounding the topic of desegregation. In fact, Biden was so against the concept of mandating school integration that he once referred to the idea as “the most racist concept you can come up with,” and, even up until a 2007 memoir, argued that the concept was “a liberal train wreck.” Senator Biden also argued that it was better for blacks to be segregated, because we preferred it that way.

  Perhaps most flagrantly, Biden was also a leading crusader and coauthor of the notorious 1994 crime bill, championing harsher sentencing policies that led to defendants’ serving longer prison terms, which disproportionately affected black men.

  And yet here he appears, years later in 2020, unwilling to answer any questions about his past misgivings. Because why on earth would black Americans need anything more than a basic instruction to vote Democrat?

  Most troubling for me was Biden’s usage of the word “ain’t” during the interview. I’ve scoured the internet looking for clips of him saying “ain’t” while speaking to a white person, and come up dry. It seems he reserves his broken English just as Hillary Clinton reserves her hot sauce: for the black community only.

  But what do these incursions amount to? Should we be upset with Biden and Clinton for an apparent lack of respect? I think the better question is, Do we conduct ourselves in a manner that commands respect?

  I believe wholeheartedly that Democrat politicians believe that black people are stupid. I believe they look at our culture of disrespect which was fostered not by a natural black identity but by the long-term success of Democrat policies; polices that debased our men, our women, and thus our families; policies that corroded the world around us and which we then transformed into our music.

  I often hear from black liberals, “Candace doesn’t represent the black community,” and to that I always think, “and neither do you.” No black American who participates in the modern culture of debauchery is representative of the glory of our ancestors. It has never been my goal to be viewed as a spokesperson for debasement. In fact, it is my unequivocal intention to be seen as an adversary to it.

  I believe what the Democrats see in black America is an undereducated community of people who are overinvested in culture. Their methodology, then, is to maintain control of the culture as a means to regulate the black vote. It is well known that it is career suicide for any person in Hollywood to be explicitly conservative. If they share any perspective that pivots away from liberal orthodoxy, they are accused of racism and branded a Nazi. If they are black, they are accused of insanity. The left therefore employs culture—singers, actresses, and rappers—to brainwash black Americans into believing that they must think and vote as a monolith.

  And what of these celebrities? The bible cautions repeatedly against the sin of idolatry:

  “Little children keep yourselves from idols.”

  “Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves any gods of cast metal.”

  “The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply.”

  I used to have a lot of idols. I now have none. I have watched the black community be lured time and time again by “idols” into self-destructive behaviors. That, in my opinion, is the evil of Hollywood. It is Taylor Swift’s, Beyoncé’s, and scores of other chart-toppers’ belief that their mere presence yields such divinity that they may command legions of fans to vote, think, and act according to their whims. Black culture has become rotted by such idolatry, the reins of which are controlled by Democrats.

  Take the recent death of George Floyd, a black man who was killed by a police officer during a botched arrest in Minnesota. During the four years leading up to this incident, and because of the media’s obsession with police brutality during the 2016 election cycle, I forewarned the black community that at some point in 2020 we could expect the killing of a black man to be widely publicized and immediately politicized. But when the video of George Floyd dying as a police officer pressed a knee into his neck hit the internet—not even I could have predicted the worldwide response.

  It is important to note that as of this writing and now weeks into the nightmare that has swept America since this killing, we still have not seen full footage of what happened on that day. What we do know is that on May 25, 2020, police officers were called to the scene after a store clerk reported that a man had attempted to use a counterfeit bill. The caller described the man as being under the influence.

  “He’s sitting on his car ’cause he is awfully drunk and he’s not in control of himself,” the caller stated.

  The phone-recorded video of the arrest made available to the internet shows George Floyd being restrained by a police officer’s knee to his neck. Several times, Floyd says to the police officer, “I can’t breathe.” Five minutes into the video, Floyd appears to be completely unconscious. Minutes later he is transported into an ambulance, and we learn that he is pronounced dead some time beyond that.

  There was an immediate national consensus that the officer in question, Derek Chauvin, was in the wrong. In a rare moment of political accord, pundits and leaders from both sides of the aisle demanded the officer’s immediate arrest. After a brief internal investigation into the matter, Derek Chauvin was arrested four days later on May 29, charged with third-degree murder and second-degree murder. It was, by any reasonable estimation, extremely swift, agreed-upon action.

  But nothing is reasonable in an election year.

  Activist groups Black Lives Matter and Antifa immediately readied their engines. Within days, Minneapolis (the city where the incident had taken place) was on fire. Rioters burned and looted businesses and stores, as wider calls were made to carry similar riots out across the nation. Celebrities came out in instant support of the protesters, pledging funds to bail out any person who was arrested. Los Angeles, D.C, Minneapolis, Atlanta, New York—all major Democrat-controlled cities—burned. Black business owners pleaded with the rioters to stop the madness, as they were forced to watch all they worked for reduced to ashes overnight. The rioters burned American flags; they burned police officers. Two lawyers, one a Princeton-educated corporate attorney, the other a Fordham University law graduate, were arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail into a police patrol car in New York City. Police officers were ruthlessly attacked all across the country.

  At the time of writing, fourteen black Americans have been killed in these riots. The rapid rate of death and destruction in black neighborhoods was of no apparent consequ
ence to the protesters. Beautiful tributes to George Floyd poured in from all around the world. Joe Biden prerecorded a speech for his funeral. Murals were painted of Floyd all across the country, and journalists rushed to eulogize him as a “gentle giant.” Celebrities, musicians, and politicians gathered in front of George Floyd’s golden casket as the ever-nefarious Reverend Al Sharpton gave an empowered tribute, complete with several shots at President Trump, who was now somehow to be blamed for the incident.

  “George Floyd’s story has been the story of black folks. Because ever since 401 years ago, the reason we could never be who we wanted and dreamed to be is because you kept your knee on our neck,” Sharpton bellowed. “What happened to Floyd happens every day in this country… It’s time for us to stand up in George’s name and say ‘Get your knees off our necks.’ ”

  A series of televised memorials, in three different cities over the course of six days, were planned as a follow-up. Millions of dollars poured in to support the Floyd family. In a matter of days, George Floyd had been transformed into a martyr for black America, an iconic symbol of our inherent oppressions in a racist society.

  Any individuals who did not post a tribute to George Floyd and Black Lives Matter were immediately branded racists. Culture had dictated that this was the corrective course of action, and any person who refused the mandate was publicly lambasted.

  I kept quiet for more than a week—an eternity, in social media terms. I watched the all-too-predictable lie so carefully being woven, every fiber supported by Hollywood idols. I ignored many requests for me to comment on the situation, preferring to remain quiet and let Floyd’s family grieve until I could no longer stay silent.

  It was the death of David Dorn that was the final straw. David Dorn, a 77-year-old black man and retired St. Louis police captain, had responded to an alarm at a pawn shop that he was providing security for during the riots. Aware of lootings taking place, Dorn went down to defend the shop, and was subsequently shot and killed by a 24-year-old black man who was in the middle of robbing the place. His death was captured on video. I watched an innocent black elderly man bleed out onto a concrete surface, because “culture” had sounded the alarm on racism. No celebrities or Democrat politicians said anything about his death at all. No Floyd-level tributes were posted in his honor, or organized protests staged in his name. Because David Dorn had made the same mistake that 94 percent of black homicide victims make: he was killed by another black person.