In a wonderful speech in late February before the Conservative Political Action Conference [CPAC] in Maryland, Candace Owens states that her three years of interacting with hysterical “woke” liberals has clearly revealed that the vast majority of them know absolutely nothing of human history, or at least of that portion of it which preceded 1776. The chief target of her diatribe is Colin Kaepernick who has made it quite clear that he sees America as the preeminent oppressor of Black and Brown people, indeed that he intends to travel to Ghana for the July 4th holiday in an expression of solidarity with his Indigenous brethren, those innocents so viciously abused by their European oppressors. Candace gives Kaepernick a history lesson.
Invoking the Persian, Turkish, Ottoman, Egyptian, Chinese and Mongolian Empires, she asserts that invading, conquering and indeed enslaving others has been a staple of human history from its inception, most often involving one people of “color” abusing another. Pointing out that Britain under Wilberforce was the first world power to officially abolish slavery, she informs the incredibly uninformed Kaepernick that his beloved Ghana was in fact recently discovered to be holding approximately 20,000 children captive in the service of its fishing industry, a story validated by the demonstrably “progressive” CNN last year. Africa in general, she averred, is presently home to more than 700,000 slaves, many forcibly conscripted as child soldiers, others callously bought and sold in human trafficking ventures.
Most dramatic of all was Owens’ description of the sacrificial rites of the ancient Aztecs, disgustingly brutish ceremonies whose victims had their still beating hearts torn from their chests, their flesh subsequently divided into portions and sent home as food with the onlooking crowds. Alluding to evidence suggesting the same sort of practices to have been common in the Southwestern States among the Anasazi and indeed that conquering and enslaving their neighbors was commonplace among the “pre-contact” Indigenous of the Americas, she wonders both at Kaepernick’s apparent empathy for them and his insistence that White Western Europeans are the greatest villains of human history.
Stating exactly what I would have said in her situation, Owens insists she is neither trying to promote some sweeping condemnation of Indians in general, nor trying to absolve White Western colonialists of their many misdeeds. Her sole concern is the truth. It is that, and that alone that ought to guide us.