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.
Candace Owens says the black community did better for the first 100 years after slavery and it's been downhill sinc… https://t.co/hNTzd7XyAT— Andrew Lawrence (@Andrew Lawrence) 1560307037
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.
I try to ignore stuff like this but owens is describing the height of lynch law, Jim Crow segregation and disenfran… https://t.co/S9zzNUBfGV— Adam Serwer 🍝 (@Adam Serwer 🍝) 1560342703
It’s also ridiculous that Dr Cornel West – a professor at Harvard University – has to seriously engage with this.
I literally have no idea why 1) Cornel goes on the White Power Hour with Laura, and 2) lowers himself to ‘debating’… https://t.co/oQjbI7d96K— Mehdi Hasan (@Mehdi Hasan) 1560315343
Owens’ argument, which involved claiming that US welfare policy in the 20th century was “socialism”, wasn’t very convincing for a lot of people.
@ndrew_lawrence For every Harlem Renaissance there is a Tulsa Race Riot and lynching...— Jeff Kumpula (@Jeff Kumpula) 1560310539
@ndrew_lawrence "According to the Equal Justice Initiative, 4,084 African-Americans were lynched between 1877 and 1950 in the South."— Get vaccinated. Against COVID & fascism. web rant (@Get vaccinated. Against COVID & fascism. web rant) 1560308199
@ndrew_lawrence I wonder how many lynchings there were from 1865 until 1965 vs. from 1966 on. I also wonder how man… https://t.co/d8PeZPOT3y— Ethelred the Ambivalent (@Ethelred the Ambivalent) 1560315921
something that probably deserves a little intra-conservative analysis is the fact that the most popular black conse… https://t.co/LRVBEIQ3j1— b-boy bouiebaisse (@b-boy bouiebaisse) 1560344571
HT: MediaMatters