Candace Owens Just Made the Most Absurd Possible Argument Against Colin Kaepernick

It involves accusing Native Americans of cannibalism.

Evan Golub/Zuma

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Conservative activist and diehard Trump defender Candace Owens employed some impressively twisted logic in her tirade against “race hustler” Colin Kaepernick at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday.

Having taken objection to a Thanksgiving tweet from the former star quarterback which read, “The US government has stolen over 1.5 billion acres of land from Indigenous people,” Owens resorted to the same flawed rationale the colonists started using back in 1492: Native Americans needed to be civilized, because they were cannibals. “Did cannibalism get lost in Colin’s flowery depiction of Indigenous people?” she said. (Accounts of Aztec cannibalism come mostly from 16th-century Spanish explorers who exaggerated Indigenous people’s “savagery” to justify their conquest of the Americas—a point she reduces to “political correctness.”)

She then directed her vitriol at Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Ta-Nehisi Coates (whose name she mispronounced), CNN, the New York Times, and MSNBC. “To every single one of you race hustlers who have extorted black pain to line your own pockets,” she said, “who have blindfolded the black youth against seeing the opportunities that lay beneath their feet here in America in the land of the free, in the home of the free, in the home of the brave, I say this to you: There will be a Blexit. A black exit.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate