While on the one hand, Kanye’s return to Twitter has gifted us all with the promise of four new G.O.O.D music albums, including one Kanye and Kid Cudi album and one solo project. On the other hand, though, Kanye took to Twitter earlier today to tweet one of his most controversial opinions yet: that he likes the way conservative pundit and YouTuber Candace Owens “thinks.”
I love the way Candace Owens thinks
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 21, 2018
Candace Owens, who has been hailed as the next Tomi Lahren, rose to fame as the creator of YouTube channel Red Black Pill. Some of the titles of her videos include: “How to Escape the Democrat Plantation” and “WTF? Black Lives Matter Has a List of Demands for White People!” Her online success subsequently led to a story on Breitbart, an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, and several appearances on Fox News and InfoWars. (She loved Kanye’s shout out, by the way.)
Kanye’s co-sign of Candace has been hailed by many as a dangerous move, considering how many fans he has and just how questionable Candace’s rhetoric can be.
To understand what I mean by questionable, here are some of her worst takes.
Police shootings of black men are not about racism
Tried to create database of online bullies that would lead to more harassment
She argued Black people should vote Republican to fix their problems
View this video on YouTube
During a campaign rally, Trump asked black people considering voting for him: “what have you got to lose?” Candice shared this view, even saying in one interview that “rap and hip-hop music… glorified” Trump during the presidential campaign. “And then the second he won, he became a racist instantly,” Candace said, which can only be an ugly, deliberate lie (plenty of people called Trump racist before he won the election). “In that moment, I understood that racism was being used as a theme and a mechanism to control black Americans and that the black community needed new leaders to sort of see them through that complete lie,” she continued. She failed to provide one example of a Trump policy that would benefit the black community. In a Fox News interview, she blamed “Chicago’s problems” on the fact that Black people there continue to vote Democrat. While it might be true that Democrats sometimes fail as politicians, it sure seems better than voting for a guy who appoints an Attorney General who said the only issue he ever had with the KKK was the fact that they smoked marijuana.
She loved "Black Panther"… because it’s pro-Trump
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Candace watched all of Black Panther and came away thinking the movie was pro-Trump. Let’s get one thing straight right away: Black Panther was a nuanced argument about the historically complicated issue of race in America. The movie effectively picks apart the flaws in two differing arguments for how Black people should exist in a world that has historically discriminated against them and instead makes a case for a solution that is somewhere in between.
In essence, Candace argued that Killmonger’s line of thought in Black Panther is the same “vengeful, nonsensical, burn-down-your-own-neighborhood” rhetoric that Black Lives Matter has. It’s a reductive and frustrating analysis of the movie: the entire point was to make a complex argument that makes you sympathize with Killmonger and with the Wakandan view. She argued Wakanda thrived because it was “tough on borders” and didn’t let in refugees in, which are both examples of Trump policies, which is not true. For starters, immediately upon becoming king, T’Challah looked to his trusted, intelligent (and overwhelmingly black female) advisors to figure out how to lead. Trump, on the other hand, appointed Jeff Sessions.
