Red Pill Black YouTube Creator Candace Owens joined Dan and Amy to discuss her journey from liberal to conservative, her issues with the ‘alt-left,’ identity politics, and more:
DAN: We’re pleased to be joined by Red Pill Black. She is Candace Owens. Candace, thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate it .
CANDACE: I’m so excited to be able to talk to you guys. How are you doing?
DAN: Good. We’ve enjoyed your videos and so have many of our listeners, so it’s a pleasure to have you on the show. Just a little bit on what prompted you to start posting your views on the world around us and how surprised were you by the popularity of them?
CANDACE: To answer the first question, I was inspired by, obviously, the rise of Donald Trump. I was actually, people don’t know this, I was a liberal a year and a half ago, so I was believing sort of this media hysteria, and then I had what everyone refers to as your red pill moment, and then a year later, after watching, you know, what they did to Trump and then he won and what they continue to do to Trump, I decided that I had enough and that I wanted to be in this game one hundred percent. Flipped open my laptop, made a few videos, and to answer your second question, absolutely shocked that, you know, I think that my third video it was trending worldwide. It was dubbed into French, in Portuguese, and it let me know that I was really tapping into a sentiment of people just believing that we’re being lied to by the media. It’s not just an American sentiment. It’s one the world over.
I mean, the NAACP is one of the worst groups for black people. All they do is jump on a platform, and they never talk about real issues that are facing the black community.
AMY: Now, I know when you transform from a liberal a to conservative, you might lose some friends or family members along the way. What has been their reaction?
CANDACE: You know, in terms of the friendship, it was the natural shedding. It had to happen, I think. I have no regrets there. A lot of me had always kind of questioned their intentions. Everyone was sort of a victim, and I’ve never been a victim. People have said to me, you know, Candace, you say you’re a Democrat, but I’m pretty sure there’s no way you could possibly be a liberal because you run on logic and I always have run on logic. In terms of family, they’ve been largely very accepting of it. They love what I’m doing, and they just say, “Oh, that’s just Candace, and she’s always thought for herself,” and I have always had my own mind since I was a little girl, sp nothing bad there, fortunately
DAN: The thing I liked about some what you had to say, including that snippet we just played, is when you were talking about Charlottesville, and then comparing it to your daily life, where you interact with people of all shapes and sizes, races, and everything and, there’s no problems, which is, I think, the experience of most people, and I think that was the point you were making.
CANDACE: Right, and it’s interesting that people rely on their experienced that the TV tells them. They don’t even rely on their own personal experiences that they have everyday.
I speak out against Democrats because they’ve been the ones who have warped black thought, I think, the most, and they continue to warp black thought and have people focus on the wrong issues.
DAN: Yeah, exactly, and the other thing I liked about that was, “I’m not on anybody’s side,” you know, like forcing me to choose a binary that I don’t have to choose, and I’m not comfortable with either side of it. No, I don’t have to choose, and I can just kind of voice my opinion wherever that lands on the spectrum on a particular issue.
CANDACE: Exactly. That’s the number one misconception that people have. I do a lot of videos where I speak out against Democrats in the leftist media space, they assume that I’m a Republican, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. All I’m doing, here, I speak out against Democrats because they’ve been the ones who have warped black thought, I think, the most, and they continue to warp black thought and have people focus on the wrong issues, but I am by no means a Republican. I just encourage people to think independently. and all I want to do is to think for themselves.
AMY: I don’t know if you’re going to be blogging about this, but American Airlines, now accused of racism after some disturbing incidents and the NAACP is warning black folks about flying American Airlines. Have you studied into that? Have you researched this?
CANDACE: I have not studied into that, but I’m not surprised. I mean, the NAACP is one of the worst groups for black people. All they do is jump on a platform, and they never talk about real issues that are facing the black community. It’s all about PR for them, so I’m sure if they’re involved then it’s got to be absolute BS.
DAN: Do you ever get tired of, kind of, being asked questions to answer on behalf of a community that you share a racial profile with? In other words, you know, as a black person, let’s talk about K-12 education for black children. As a black person, let’s talk about economic opportunity for black people, as opposed to just, as talking to Candace about jobs.Talking to Candace about how we should do K-12 education in the twenty-first century. Do you get the distinction I’m making?
CANDACE: Right, I understand exactly what you’re saying. The truth is I don’t get tired of it because that is largely my mission — to wake up the black community. I think we’ve been sleeping. You can see with these groups like Black Lives Matter. It’s just encouraging black people to be angry and to only focus on the past and that is never, ever, ever going to produce results in our futures. I’m happy to be a leader. The black community needs new leaders, in general, so I’m always happy to weigh in about other issues just as Candace the person. But I’m also happy to be a new voice in the black community.
DAN: What do you do professionally before blogging and all this stuff?
CANDACE: I worked for three and a half years in private equity. That was primarily to help pay off my student loans. I was, at first, an executive assistant, and then I was the vice president of the administration. I did a lot of the hiring for them and traveled with the CEO. And yeah, so that’s pretty much my history in terms of what I did for work, and that’s why I had to really kind of say I have to either go in all the way in with this. You can’t just dip your toe into politics.I probably will never be able to go back to being a person ever again.
AMY: Where you born and raised?
CANDACE: I was born in White Plains, New York ,and I was raised in Stamford, Connecticut. People always assume that I was raised really wealthy because it’s Connecticut, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. I grew up very poor.
When Bill Clinton was in office, he put … He basically destroyed an entire generation of black families, and you don’t understand what that does.
DAN: Your professional background is interesting. So there’s an entrepreneur in Chicago who is a friend of ours, friend of the show. He’s a successful black entrepreneur. He has a company called Killer Spin. It’s an experiential ping-pong company. It’s really cool. His name is Robert Blackwell, super sharp guy. He’s actually like a math genius, but he’s goes off and does these entrepreneur ventures, and one of the things he says, in terms of the the inflection or the intersection point for the black community, in terms of kind of reshaping what’s happening and how people are thinking about what the pathway to more opportunity more success is … He thinks it’s entrepreneurship. School choice and some of the other arguments that have been made, even from the center right, are all well and good, but he really thinks it’s about entrepreneurship and business starts. Black families supporting black businesses. White people who want to be supportive just doing business with black people. Not a program. Just a mutually beneficial exchange like any other business transaction and that’s really the pathway to, you know, a different trajectory for the black community writ large in this country. Do you agree with that?
CANDACE: I agree. I don’t necessarily agree that it’s the number one thing, but it’s a huge component. I always say that it starts with the family the way.The way that black people have gotten here to begin with is the breakdown of the black family. People don’t understand. There’s a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and I read it when I was probably way too young to read it. My uncle gave it to me, and it just shows you how different you grow up if you grow up around people that are wealthy. The dinner conversation that are different, versus people that are very poor. In a lot of our families, the fathers are away in prison, you know. When Bill Clinton was in office, he put … He basically destroyed an entire generation of black families, and you don’t understand what that does. So to encourage entrepreneurship you would have to imagine that that person grew up in an environment that they felt inspired enough to be an entrepreneur or that they had the self-confidence to be an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. So ironically I’m involved a charity that’s in Chicago that’s trying to stomp out father absence, and that’s kind of my number one 501(c)3 thing that I do. It’s always for fathers and pro fathers.
DAN: So what’s the non-profit?
CANDACE: It’s called C2EFA — Cycling to End Father Absence. It’s run by David Hirsch. It’s Twenty First Century Dads, that’s the official name of the charity, and they do this cycling events all over the nation to raise money for different causes, so sometimes it’s for incarceration, you know, helping that transition when fathers get out. Other times it’s for fathers that are raising special needs kids. That’s the number one reason that fathers walk away. You don’t know this, but in divorces, they have the highest divorce rate — parents of special needs. I’m a traditionalist when it comes to the family, and I understand how much having … coming from a full family benefits a child later in life.
AMY: Your father … what impressions did he mark on your soul and on your character?
CANDACE: Yes, so I have a father. my parents are divorced. My family is no example to any family of the way a family should be run, but yeah, my father is not present in my life. I mean, he lives on the West Coast, and even though he was always around when I was a child, he didn’t mark any sort of leadership in my heart, I would say. My grandfather is kind of the person that ran the family and made sure everyone came in, that I ate dinner, and that sort of thing, so I look up to my grandfather more than anything in the world
DAn: I get the sense that you’re a bit younger than than us, particularly Amy .
AMY: Wow .. I do have my AARP card, but okay …
DAN: So I want to get your take on … It seems to me you’re not too far removed from a college campus. and what your take is on the race identity politics and gender identity and just all of the kind of non-behavioral characteristics identity politics that happens on college campuses that’s spilled out into the body politic and the culture at large.
CANDACE: So my opinion … Actually, I just got back from visiting Berkeley. I’ve been there twice so far this month, and I kind have gone around and spoken to the students. I think it’s the perfect time … and again, I always go back to the idea that liberal Democrats, this has kind of been their marketing shtick. They appeal to people who tend to vote but really, kind of, know nothing about life. So when you’re in college, you know, you don’t understand any about life. You don’t have a mortgage. The perfect person to tap into and say, “You’ve got to care about something. Don’t you care about these social issues?” And they don’t understand that while their hearts are well-intentioned, they don’t have a fully-formed brain, when it comes to understanding the real issues that we’re facing in America. What we’re basically seeing is, in my opinion, a mass marketing campaign, a very well-funded, perhaps by George Soros, where they just kind of implement, and they’ve been sort of changing the way that these children think. It just doesn’t start in college. People talk about college all the time. My ideas … The reason I was a liberal fpr so long is because it starts when you’re in kindergarten. Every time I open a history book, Democrats were the heroes, as a black person.They freed the slaves. They did this. They did that. Every opportunity we ever had. LBJ in office. You don’t learn about the dark side of history. It’s perfectly curated, so you almost have to go back and understand who okayed these textbooks, in general. It’s a mass brainwashing that starts well beyond college, and I always say public education is not free. It’s a brainwashing, and it’s a way to condition people think.
AMY: Yeah, I mean we completely glossed over the Japanese internment camps. It was like, “Oh, we did something over there. Okay, next chapter.” I mean, honestly, we didn’t even discuss it. Yeah, we questioned some Japanese families just make sure that they weren’t spies in America.
CANDACE: Right, exactly. I’m glad you bring up Japanese families. They’re always talking about white privilege. Who’s doing the best in America right now? Asians are doing the best, and no one want to talks about why. You want to know why? Because they work hard. There is no privilege. The bottom line is that people have to work hard, and no matter what their history is if they want to have a productive future.
DAN: Unless you’re a politician, then there’s political class privilege. That’s a real thing. All right, I’ve got to ask you this, too. This is the burning issue of the day. This seems to me what’s separating us from becoming a colorblind society. It’s the Corn Pops box. There’s a brown corn pop cartoon on the cereal box, and he’s a janitor corn pop. So you know this was protested and now Kellogg’s you know, a Fortune 500 company, Kellogg’s is responding to somebody tweeting about it, and they’re redesigning their boxes over one person complaining and suggesting that’s, you know, promoting racism .
CANDACE: Well, this is the same Kellogg’s that pulled out all of their funding of Breitbart because people put pressure on them during the Donald Trump election, so I’m not surprised … Whoever is running that company is obviously super super liberal, and look, it’s their funeral. Let them do what they need to do. I mean, I think it’s laugh out loud funny. It’s ridiculous, and I just can’t imagine. Have you ever wondered about these people that go around and look for a reason to be offended.
AMY: It’s got to be a full time job right?
CANDACE: I can’t you imagine being in the cereal aisle and walking away crying. It’s just so funny. Amazing, right?
DAN: I tried to communicate to the cashier: I can’t speak right now! The Corn Pops box!
AMY: It’s going to be a collector’s item, trust me.
DAN: Candace Owens, at Red Pill Black. Red Pill Black is her vlogger handle. Obviously from what you heard today, you’re going to want to continue to follow her and watch for her ruminations on the passing scene. Candace, pleasure to speak with you. Hope to do it again. Thanks for joining us
CANDACE: Thank you guys so much. Absolutely. Have a good one.
AMY: You too, and we’ll have you back soon.