In a courageous video on Thursday, conservative leader Candace Owens took to YouTube with a message that will undoubtedly shock and horrify liberals who are trying to turn George Floyd into an icon of Black America. In the video, Owens said that while she is aghast at the murder of Floyd, she does not believe that he should be turned into a “martyr” for the black community.
Owens began by ticking off a history of Floyd’s criminal activity, which included a 2007 armed robbery for which he served five years in prison. Owens said that despite the media’s efforts to portray Floyd as a man who has been rehabilitated, that picture contrasted with the fact that he tried to pass a counterfeit bill in his final moments and the fact that his autopsy showed drugs in his system.
Being careful to explain that she meant none of this as any sort of excuse for what Officer Derek Chauvin did, Owens explained: “The more that I would think about it, I realized that we are being sold a lot of lies, at the detriment to the black community, at the detriment to the white community and at the detriment to America as a whole. So I want to come out and say that I do not support George Floyd and the media depiction of him as a martyr for black America.”
Owens continued, noting that the black community is “unique in that we are the only people that fight and scream and demand support and justice for the people in our community that are up to no good.”
Reiterating that Floyd’s family “deserves justice for the way he died,” Owens said that the injustice of his death didn’t mean he needed to be held up as a hero.
“I am not going to accept the narrative that this is the best the black community has to offer,” she said. “For whatever reason it has become fashionable over the last five or six years for us to turn criminals into heroes overnight, and it is something that I find to be despicable and there’s something that I refuse to stand by any longer and I am not going to play a part in it — no matter how much pressure comes from black liberals and black conservatives as some token of people wanting you to believe that this is the only way you can be black.”
This was a powerful message that we’re sure will land with a thud on the leftist, BLM side of things. That’s fine. It needed to be said. Not because it’s necessary to tarnish Floyd’s reputation posthumously but because black Americans have so many more worthy role models.
Candace Owens, for a start.
