Rapper Kanye West expressed support for a conservative black Trump supporter on April 21.
“I love the way Candace Owens thinks,” West wrote on Twitter.
Owens is a writer, producer, and commentator. She is the communications director for Turning Point USA, a conservative nonprofit.
West supported President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential race.
Left-wing media were quick to report on West’s tweet while labeling Owens as a “far-right media personality.”
Owens fired back a tweet to clarify her position. “Far right? Allow me to clarify: I believe the black community can do it without hand-outs. I believe the Democrats have strapped us to our past to prevent us from our futures. And I won’t stop fighting until all black Americans see that,” she wrote on April 21. “I’m not far right—I’m free.”
“He did something you could rarely see,” Adams said. “Kanye, in seven words, unlocked a mental prison.”
Owens has criticized the Black Lives Matter movement. She summarized her view of the group recently when a group of Black Lives Matter hecklers interrupted her event at University of California–Los Angeles.
“There’s an ideological civil war happening: black people that are focused on their past and shouting about slavery, and black people that are focused on their futures,” Owens said to applause from the audience. “I can guarantee you, what you’re seeing is victim mentality versus victor mentality.”
“Victim mentality is not cool. I don’t know why people like being oppressed,” she said, gesturing to the hecklers. “You’re not living through anything right now. You’re overly privileged Americans.”
West mirrored some of Owens’s thought in several tweets.
“Self victimization is a disease,” he wrote in a tweet on April 22.
“There was a time when slavery was the trend and apparently that time is still upon us,” he wrote in another message. “But now it’s a mentality.”
Left-wing commentators attacked both Owens and West for their tweets. When asked about the attacks on Fox News on April 22, Owens said that the backlash is a common left-wing tactic.
“I think it’s pretty typical of the left. The truth is that the left wants to strap black people with this idea that they are victims,” Owens said. “They do not want black people to focus on their future. They want black people to focus on their past.”
