The life and career of Candace Owens, the Black conservative activist who attacked Black Lives Matter and said George Floyd was 'not a good person'
Grace Panetta,Ashley Collman
- Right-wing activist Candace Owens recently resurfaced in the news for criticizing the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd's death.
- Owens is a conservative commentator who has been gaining prominence in recent years for her controversial views.
- She has also gained a fan in President Trump.
- Here's a timeline of her early life and career.
Candace Owens, a 31-year-old Black conservative commentator, resurfaced in national news in recent days for attacking George Floyd's character and the Black Lives Matter protests.
On June 3, Owens posted a video criticizing the Black community for making a "martyr" out of Floyd, while pointing out his various arrests over the years.
She has made a name for herself in recent years among the far right by sharing her opinions on politics on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
She's made a fan out of President Donald Trump, and founded the "Blexit" movement — to encourage Black Americans to ditch their historic ties with the Democratic Party.
Here's a look at Owens' life and career so far, and how she rose to be a star on America's right.
In 2010, she worked at Vogue magazine, and in 2012, joined a private-equity company in New York City.
Source: The Connecticut Post
In 2016, she started a website called SocialAutopsy.com, which identified and exposed online bullies. She said she made the site after experiencing racialized bullying and harassment in high school.
Source: The Connecticut Post, YouTube
Her rise to fame in the far-right world started in 2017, when she founded her YouTube channel. In her videos, he criticizes the Democratic Party, the Black Lives Matter movement, feminism, and expresses support for President Donald Trump.
Much of her media commentary revolves around promoting Black conservatism and her belief that the Democratic Party is creating and profiting from a "victim mentality" among African-Americans.
She has referred to the Democrat Party as a "plantation" and its prominent supporters its "slaves."
She has also referred to the Black Lives Matter movement as "whiny toddlers pretending to be oppressed."
Some of her most-viewed videos have titles such as: "I don't care about Charlottesville, the KKK, and white supremacy" and "How to escape the Democrat Plantation."
Source: YouTube
She also opposes gun control, and referred to the #MeToo movement as a "political witch hunt." She even questioned the validity of climate change in an interview with Joe Rogan.
In 2018, she started the "Blexit" movement, a campaign to encourage African-Americans to end their historical allegiance to the Democratic Party.
Source: Fox News
Between 2017 and 2019, she also served as communications director for Turning Point USA, a conservative, pro-Trump non-profit.
Owens is a frequent guest on Fox News, often discussing ways in which she thinks the Democratic Party is failing Black Americans.
In 2018, rapper Kanye West tweeted "I love the way Candace Owens thinks" — though he has since distanced himself from her.
West tweeted the praise about Owens in January 2018.
But in October 2018, he tweeted that he was leaving politics to focus on creative work, and said he had "nothing to do with" Owens' Blexit movement.
Owens responded by saying she was hurt by West's tweets, saying: "If I had to imagine what it would feel like to have a bullet pierce my heart, it would be exactly like the moment I learned Kanye told the world he felt I had used him."
Source: Kanye West/Twitter, Insider
In 2020, Owens has been in hot water for spreading coronavirus conspiracy theories on Twitter, including saying that hospitals and states were inflating the death toll for financial gain.
Some of Trump's aides also believed that hospitals might be misdiagnosing patients with COVID-19 to get a 20% bonus from Medicare, Axios reported in May.
Misdiagnosing a patient is fraud, and there is no public evidence to show hospitals have been abusing this system.
Source: Insider
And in June 3, Owens recorded a Facebook video critical of George Floyd and the protests in the wake of his death.
"I do not support George Floyd and the media depiction of him as a martyr for Black America," she said in the 18-minute Facebook video.
"For whatever reason, it has become fashionable over the last five or six years for us to turn criminals into heroes overnight and it's something that I find despicable," she added.
Later that day, she went on Glenn Beck's radio show and expounded on her opinion, saying "George Floyd was not a good person" and "the fact that he has been held up as a martyr sickens me."
Trump later retweeted her quote on the show:
After the appearance, Owens was invited to the White House to take part in a discussion with Vice President Mike Pence on how to move the nation forward after Floyd's death, which prompted outage, according to DailyMail.com.
Owens is seen in the far left of this picture:
She also started a GoFundMe campaign for an Alabama business whose co-owner was widely criticized for calling Floyd a "thug." GoFundMe later kicked her off the platform, saying she violated its policies.
In a statement on Sunday, GoFundMe accused Owens of making "falsehoods against the black community."
Source: Business Insider
What's next for Owens? A book, apparently. "Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation" is expected to publish in September 2020.
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