BLEXIT Anyone? Popular Conservative Podcaster Candace Owens is Still Trying to Convince Black Americans to Shift Right
By Jaden Satenstein, December 7, 2022
Black Americans vote blue at higher rates than any other racial group in the country. Candace Owens wants to change that.
That’s why the right-wing commentator founded the BLEXIT Foundation, urging fellow Black Americans to abandon what has been its party of choice for decades.
But is it working?
The Early Years
Owens, the former communications director for Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk’s organization that promotes conservative ideas among young people, has built a notable brand for herself. She hosts her own podcast on Ben Shapiro’s fast-growing Daily Wire podcast network and shares daily tweets attacking liberals with her 3.2 million Twitter followers.
Owens and fellow Black conservative commentator Brandon Tatum started the BLEXIT Foundation in 2018 to encourage Black Americans to abandon the Democratic party and start voting red. BLEXIT’s website notes that it “educates minority communities regarding America’s founding principles, and highlights the importance of free markets and entrepreneurship as the antidote to poverty.”
BLEXIT gained attention during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and capitalized on opposition to the movement to raise more than seven million dollars in donations. BLEXIT also garnered media coverage that year when it paid Black Americans to travel to former President Donald J. Trump’s first White House event after his bout with Covid in October 2020. The attendees were required to wear BLEXIT shirts.
Ye Entanglements and other Controversies
Though BLEXIT’s financial gains quickly diminished after 2020, a recent exposé by The Daily Beast revealed that Owens is benefiting from it more than ever. BLEXIT’s 2021 tax filings show that the organization received about $2.3 million in contributions that year, less than a third of its 2020 donations. Even so, the article notes, payments to employees nearly doubled, with Owens herself receiving a salary bump. (Owens and BLEXIT Foundation representatives did not respond to The Righting’s requests for comment.)
Even the name Owens chose for the organization raises questions. BLEXIT, a clear pun on the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, was first coined by Me’Lea Connelly in 2016 to encourage fellow Black Americans to leave the financial “system of oppression” and invest in their own communities to achieve Black economic independence.
That movement has launched a Black-led credit union, encouraged Black people to join Black-owned banks, and promoted potential solutions to issues like predatory lending and gentrification. Connelly shared on SiriusXM’s “The Clay Cane Show” that she was “heartbroken” when Owens “co-opted” the term she’d been using for two years at that point.
And Owens’ BLEXIT made tabloid headlines when it became entangled in drama with none other than Kanye West, who legally changed his name to “Ye” last year. Back in 2018, Owens publicly apologized to Ye after she claimed that he designed a logo for BLEXIT. Ye denied designing the logo. He said that he felt used by Owens and that he’d be “distancing himself from politics” going forward. Three years later, Owens changed her story, tweeting that Ye “outright lied to the world” back in 2018.
But the two were clearly on good terms again in early October, when Owens and Ye attended Paris Fashion Week in matching “White Lives Matter” shirts. Just days later, Ye was dominating headlines for spreading antisemitic vitriol. BLEXIT doubled down on defending Ye following the widespread backlash to his dangerous comments. The organization tweeted on October 17 that, “Ye – a self-made billionaire and the richest Black man in history… Instead of teaching our youth to be inspired by his freethinking, we are told to view him as ‘crazy.’ The Leftist media doesn’t want to see Black people express their creativity in POSITIVE ways or seek the truth.”
Ye has more than topped himself since, bringing white supremacist Nick Fuentes with him to Mar-a-Lago for dinner with Donald Trump and detailing his admiration for Adolf Hitler during an interview with Alex Jones. His run of offensive behavior has cost him billions and, among other things, derailed his plans to purchase the conservative social media platform Parler, which happens to be run by Owens’ husband, George Farmer
In spite of all that, his relationship with Owens appears to be intact. Four days after Ye’s interview with Jones, Owens repeatedly referred to him as her “friend” in a podcast episode titled “Please Stop Asking Me To Comment On Kanye And Everything Else.” “It’s really crappy for everybody to keep thinking that I have to answer and agree with every single thing that Ye says,” Owens said on her podcast for The Daily Wire. “I am not his spokesperson.”
BLEXIT a Bust
In 2019, Miranda Devine wrote in the NYPost that BLEXIT is “Democrats’ worst nightmare,” but that nightmare clearly hasn’t started yet. More than 8 in 10 Black Americans voted for Democratic congressional candidates in the midterms. It’s worth noting, however, that while Black voters continue to push Democrats across the finish line, voters of color have been shifting slightly to the right over the last few election cycles. While Black Americans voted more heavily Democratic last month than many pundits predicted they would, exit polls showed Black voters shifting about 4 percentage points to the right, compared to the 2018 midterms.
Even with slight shifts in the electorate, it’s clear that BLEXIT isn’t as compelling as Owens thinks, especially considering the fact that the GOP continues to double down on racist rhetoric and policies that disenfranchise Black voters, promote white supremacist ideology and increase violence against protesters. Owens has used BLEXIT to bolster her own media success, but it’s clear the movement itself is just as flawed as its British namesake.
Jaden Satenstein (@jadensat) is a writer, producer and social media consultant. She has worked for WNYC, FRONTLINE PBS, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Straus News Manhattan.
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It’s clear that BLEXIT isn’t as compelling as Candace Owens thinks, especially considering the fact that the GOP continues to double down on racist rhetoric and policies that disenfranchise Black voters and promote white supremacist ideology. (Image: Wikimedia)
