Trump supporter Candace Owens claims black people ‘were doing better’ 100 years after slavery than now

Conservative commentator Candace Owens has claimed that the black community was "doing better" 100 years after slavery than now and it’s been downhill since then.

Owens would appear to be referring to 100 years after the abolition of slavery in 1865, which would suggest that Black Americans have been worse off since 1965 – which is bizarrely the year that Jim Crow segregation laws were overruled.

In the interview on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, Owens said:

100 years after slavery, the black community was doing better. We were going up, up, up, then suddenly they socialised our community via welfare policies and the black community started going down, down, down.

How did Owens come to that conclusion? The years after 1965 saw the first black president, the first African-American person nominated to the Supreme Court and an increase in African-American college graduates.

Certainly you could argue that progress may have slowed since the 60s civil rights movement. But that's about things not improving enough - claiming life has gotten consistently worse since the 1960s is a major exaggeration.

The reactions spoke for themselves.

It’s also ridiculous that Dr Cornel West – a professor at Harvard University – has to seriously engage with this.

Owens’ argument, which involved claiming that US welfare policy in the 20th century was “socialism”, wasn’t very convincing for a lot of people.

HT: MediaMatters