The role of left-wing journalism is to sanction, through its routine attacks and dehumanizing coverage of black conservatives, the public shaming, ostracism, and sometimes violence that we are made to endure. Journalists grant social clemency. It becomes acceptable to viciously pursue blacks who refuse to bend to the will of Democrats.
As for severing the limbs of runaway slaves, the purpose of such smearing is a figurative dismembering. The Left’s intention is to make it impossible for outspoken black conservatives to move forward in their careers. Where will we work? Who will give us a platform? Who in the world would welcome an individual accused of something as heinous as white supremacy?
Fortunately, like many others who have come before me, I have survived every media assassination attempt, but not without, as was intended, an increase in threats being made against me by the Left’s domestic terrorist group—Antifa. Clad in all-black clothing and black masks (a more modern take on the fashion of their spiritual predecessors, the Ku Klux Klansmen), their members arrive in swarms to bully, harass, intimidate, and beat conservatives in public places.
In August 2018, I was eating breakfast at a café in Philadelphia with my colleague Charlie Kirk. Having recognized us in the restaurant, about forty Antifa members assembled outside. A few of them came into the restaurant and began shouting at us to leave. Police officers were called to the scene to safely deliver us from the restaurant. When we got outside, the gang members began screaming obscenities, throwing eggs and water at us. We were fortunate to capture the entire incident on camera. For many liberals, it became a wake-up call to what their party had become: white gangs chasing black Republicans out of restaurants in the name of protecting the values of Democrats. What has been will be again.
One would think that such routine displays of blatant bigotry and violence would be roundly condemned by all media members, but that is not the case. Instead, Antifa is hailed as a heroic force by leftist media figures. In fact, the prevailing mainstream narrative of the day, just as it was when the Klansmen brutalized blacks, is that certain forms of violence ought to be sanctioned for the greater moral good of society.
It was CNN anchor Chris Cuomo who during a live broadcast offered a defense of Antifa’s lawlessness when he declared, “It’s not about being right in the eyes of the law, but you also have to know what’s right and wrong in a moral—in a good and evil sense… that’s why people who show up to fight against bigots are not to be judged the same as the bigots, even if they do resort to the same kinds of petty violence.”
Cuomo is offering that violence against people who, according to his own moral view, are the real problem is justifiable. Antifa then is acting just as the Klan were in their day: as humble guardians of a more righteous narrative.
It becomes clear then how through slander, libel, and media-sanctioned violence, the Democrats have not halted but merely updated their methods of abuse against black Americans who wander off their plantation of thought. Clarence Thomas may have described this reality best in his 1991 Senate confirmation hearing. Facing mounting pressure to withdraw his Supreme Court nomination due to unsubstantiated sexual harassment allegations that, rather conveniently, arose against him, Thomas testified: “From my standpoint as a black American, as far as I’m concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured… rather than hung from a tree.”
Despite the illusion of freedom, black Americans are just as I said—still on a plantation. And the more popular that black conservatives bringing news of the abolitionist movement up north become, the more feverishly our media establishment attempts to whip us out of existence.
The dark intentions of the Democrat Party have simply metamorphosed.
FREEDOM
It was Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense that laid the groundwork and emboldened the colonists to take up arms and fight for independence from the British monarchy. It is my hope that this book, in the hands of every black American, might lay down a similar path for revolution.
True freedom and real change are always possible. I awake every morning with a renewed sense of hope that we are moving closer and closer to dragging Plato’s prisoners into the light. I have learned to practice patience, persistence, and optimism through my admiration of Frederick Douglass, who once wrote, “I have seen how a man was made a slave.” His words ring like a timeless bell because I believe that I too have seen how men are made slaves. I have seen how black Americans have been enslaved by the debate of race. I have seen how liberals and leftists, under guidance from the Democrat establishment, have stripped us of our families, our faith, and our futures. But Douglass’s quotation continues, with a promising forewarning:
“And now you shall see how a slave was made a man.”
And so we shall.
CONCLUSION
After the 2016 election, liberal America collectively mourned Hilary Clinton’s loss. In an interesting post-analysis, many prominent leaders issued condemnations to black Americans who declined to vote, thereby depriving Hillary of her much-assumed win. The accusation was that those who had not voted took for granted the privileges afforded to them by their ancestors’ pain and suffering.
The insinuation was appalling: that when wealthy elitist career politicians do not get what they want, it is because black people failed them.
Far from a call for black Americans to exercise their rights, this admonishment represented a reminder that our votes are seen as little more than our duty—not to ourselves, but to the almighty liberal establishment. The implication was clear: black Americans at polling stations are not assumed to be making a choice but rather delivering a guarantee: a guarantee to the Democrat Party that we will unquestionably commit ourselves to their continued empowerment.
The current state of affairs gives the impression that black men, women, and children sacrificed their lives to give modern blacks the opportunity to support Democrats in perpetuity. But the truth is that blood spilled by our ancestors was spilled for our freedom. Our complete freedom: the freedom to vote for and support any candidate of our choosing.
We have the right—no, the obligation—to think for ourselves, untethered by the assumptions that the liberal establishment places upon us.
I fight for black America to wake up to this freedom. To have the courage to walk away when any one person or political party no longer serves us.
In late 2018, I launched BLEXIT (Black + Exit), a movement dedicated to driving conservative principles into minority communities. My mission is simple: to challenge black America to rise to our potential. It’s not always easy to swim against the current. I am a walking testament to what happens if you dare to make an escape, once again, from the Democrat plantations.
It can be difficult to stand by the faith of your personal convictions, especially when most of the world seems to be raised against you.
The criticism I receive comes from every angle. When I speak to minority audiences, many will say to me, “Candace, I can get with you on all of the conservative stuff, but Trump? REALLY?!”
Really. Because it could have been no one else.
Who else but a boisterous New Yorker would have the courage to stand up to the entire liberal establishment? Who else but Donald J. Trump would have the courage to look black America in the face and ask us what we had to lose?
“No group in America has been more harmed by Hillary Clinton’s policies than African Americans; no group,” he said. “If Hillary Clinton’s goal was to inflict pain on the African American community, she could not have done a better job. It’s a disgrace. Tonight, I’m asking for the vote of every single African American in this country who wants to see a better future.… Look how much African American communities have suffered under Democrat control. To those I say the following: What do you have
to lose by trying something new like Trump?… America must reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton, who sees communities of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future.”
Trump’s words forced an immediate awakening upon me. I was stunned by the lack of etiquette—by his unapologetic nerve to tell the truth. In that exact moment, I realized something: if black America was going to turn the corner on the poverty, miseducation, and broken families that have loomed large for the last sixty years, it had to be him.
It had to be somebody with no political experience. It had to be someone from the outside, who came into our political china shop like a raging bull. It was never going to work any other way for black America, because when you systematically remove authority and structure from the homes, you create a group of individuals who do not respond well to traditional authority. If we are being honest, black America was never going to respond to etiquette. We are the most politically incorrect group in America: the group who birthed hip-hop and pushed American culture away from its more buttoned-up inclinations.
As a result, we needed someone equally as disruptive and against the status quo. We needed to get what we had been giving: someone who goes against the grain and will not allow faux outrage to shrink his ambitions. The black community had been dying a slow death aided by political correctness. We had accepted poise and politeness over honest dialogue. We had learned to accept lies and victimhood over truth and victorhood. And so we needed someone who could figuratively shake us back to reality.
What I love about Donald Trump is his audacity—the sheer audacity he has to tell people the truth even when he is being smeared, libeled, threatened, and told to reverse his statements. It is the same audacity that he displayed when standing on a stage in the upper Midwest and challenging all black Americans to stop pretending that we were okay when we were not. We were not winning because Obama was in the White House. In fact, by nearly every metric, we were losing. In addition to Trump’s reference to dismal inner-city schools and high unemployment among blacks, there is the fact that, during Obama’s presidency, black wealth took a stunning downturn. Matt Bruenig, founder of the People’s Policy Project, and journalist Ryan Cooper discussed this issue in a 2017 essay written for Jacobin magazine titled “How Obama Destroyed Black Wealth”:
The Obama presidency was a disaster for middle-class wealth in the United States. Between 2007 and 2016, the average wealth of the bottom 99 percent dropped by $4,500. Over the same period, the average wealth of the top 1 percent rose by $4.9 million.
This drop hit the housing wealth of African Americans particularly hard. Outside of home equity, black wealth recovered its 2007 level by 2016. But average black home equity was still $16,700 lower.
Much of this decline, we will argue, can be laid at the feet of President Obama. His housing policies led directly to millions of families losing their homes. What’s more, Obama had the power—money, legislative tools, and legal leverage—to sharply ameliorate the foreclosure crisis.
He chose not to use it.
To many, Hillary should have won the 2016 presidential election because of goodness. It would have been good to say that we elected of our first female president, and that goodness would have certainly reverberated throughout the world as a symbol of progressive glory. Similarly, it was good when we elected President Barack Obama, the first black man to serve as the leader of the free world. Likewise, because truth serves as a secondary aspiration to goodness, it is not acceptable to discuss that, despite his blackness, President Barack Obama failed black America. But in the end, truth always catches up to goodness.
This explains why, despite the good promise of socialism, Venezuela has erupted into chaos. It also explains why, despite sixty years of good government policies and good promises made by leftist politicians, black America has not seen much improvement. The goodness of welfare and affirmative action has been met with the reality that there is no substitute for hard work. And this is why Donald Trump, despite being subjected to despicable treatment from the mainstream media, who claim to uphold all that is good, has done more for black America than any politician in recent memory.
THE TRUTH ABOUT TRUMP
I am convinced that many black Americans are opposed to Trump because they simply do not understand who he is. The mainstream media has bombarded us with messaging about his flaws and indiscretions—as if leftists are somehow inherently holy—yet they fail to shed light on the true value that he brings to the presidency. And while I believe that Trump’s aggressive persona is necessary if we are going to see true progress in the black community and America as a whole, I understand that it can rub some people the wrong way. As a result, many people are blinded by their ignorance.
So let us discuss who President Trump actually is. We all know that he is a real estate mogul, turned TV star, turned president of the United States. But beyond that, I believe that Trump represents the best kind of civil upheaval, a shattering of the status quo not unlike the Hebrew slaves’ ancient Exodus from Egypt, America’s birth via the Revolutionary War, or the Allies’ defeat of Nazism and then the Soviet Union. Since the end of the Cold War, globalist, neoliberal policies have crystallized a system that served only politicians, because it was built by politicians. And since he made his dramatic entry onto the political stage, Trump has worked valiantly to upend this deeply entrenched, self-obsessed, elite globalist order.
This shift has not come without consequence, of course. As with any chemical reaction, even if you achieve the desired results, you are often left with an undesirable by-product. In Trump’s case, the first by-product was the clear crystallization of the leftist agenda: the false pretense that racism, xenophobia, misogyny, or homophobia were anything more than catchphrases used to insult and denigrate conservatives, while holding hostage black Americans and other minority groups. The second by-product was the total transformation of the mainstream media into leftist puppets and masters of psychological and emotional manipulation. And the third, thoroughly unsurprising, by-product has been the Democrat response to Trump’s presidency. Like all rulers of the past whose authority was challenged, the Left has sought to delegitimize the election of the president by any means possible.
But a tiger backed into a corner always roars loudest and fights hardest. Indeed, the real #TimesUp movement has been Trump’s commitment to remain on the front lines of such frivolous attacks while continuing to fight for liberty, justice, and truth and, most important, for those who have been long ignored by the liberal political machine. For a black community that has been tokenized and leveraged for the personal gain of a select few, Trump’s actions are a welcome relief.
Even if they had pledged to forgo their long-standing Democrat allegiance, the black community was never going to respond to Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, or John McCain, candidates who lacked the tenacity to upset the establishment in the name of freedom. Black America needed someone who was a cultural firebrand, someone who was unafraid to look his voters and his opposition in the eye and tell them exactly what they needed to hear: truth.
Today, the black community finally has a president who is willing to stand on the stage and say that the worst thing facing black America is not “white supremacy” but failing schools, not “police racism” but father absence, not a racist job market but a welfare system that discourages hard work and self-sufficiency. Despite the explosive reaction to his presidency, Trump has sought to expose the lies of the Left that have deceived black America for years, thereby leading to our community’s great awakening.
Moreover, Trump’s defense of the Constitution and upholding of the rights and liberties of the American individual is, indeed, making America great again. I said what I said. The fact that so many people, including black Americans, respond to Trump’s brilliant campaign slogan by asking when America was ever great is a testament to the effectiveness of liberal propaganda. Again, I am not denying any of the atrocities that black people have faced in this country. Bu
t without the radical, freethinking innovation of the Constitution of the United States, we would likely still be enslaved. Certainly, it was the founding principles of this country—freedom and liberty for all under God—that served as a moral compass for our Founding Fathers, even when they chose not to follow it. And it is those principles that created the space for black Americans to achieve incredible success just a few years after living in bondage.
Regarding black America specifically, the preservation of the Constitution is essential to our continued freedom, for should that document be trampled on and discarded—as are so many constitutions across the world—it is inarguable that we would bear the heaviest burden. Like black men who become the first casualties of an overzealous feminist movement and black children who suffer most at the hands of inadequate schools, black Americans can ill afford to see the rights and liberties of any Americans questioned.
In his inaugural speech, Trump spoke directly to his commitment to making America great again, not just for some people, but for all Americans—the forgotten ones, and the ones who have forgotten how great America is:
The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Everyone is listening to you now. You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before. At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens. Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public. But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.
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