Candace Owens is the kind of provocateur that is going places. Her national show and audience continues to increase by the thousands. Her outspoken and brazen forms of expression have brought her a vast array of criticism as well as abounding praise. Candace is a black woman who forcefully opines on the needs of her community. She is part of a growing number of black voices on the popular and intellectual fields fighting against the myth that to be black means to subscribe to a certain political narrative. In her talks and interviews, her strategy is to leave no prisoners behind. The latest target was the well-known Professor, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill who joined her in a fairly civil conversation on the “The Candace Owens Show.”
Hill takes virtually the opposing viewpoint on all the major issues in the black community. He views a form of re-segregation as healthy and needful. He affirms that we should create spaces only for black people, and when questioned whether he would favor the same idea for white people he notes that white people would never want to share in an all-black dormitory. We should do the same thing for Asians and Jews, he says. “Merit” should play little to no role in being accepted to a university. Diversity forms the community that is best for society whether a certain GPA is good or bad.
On discussing the nature of riots and protests, he also notes that to get the nation to pay attention to black death in this country requires the “spectacle of violence.” While not wholeheartedly embracing violent demonstrations, Hill comes rather close.
Hill’s descent into subjectivity was phenomenal. He affirmed that gender is a “social construct” and that we can “re-imagine our reality;” (language used in humanity courses all over American universities) at the same time, there ought to be, he argued, clear laws that mandate the use of gender terms not according to what we think, but according to what the person whose gender has “changed” thinks. When asked if a man can menstruate, Hill paused and said, “Sometimes.” This combination of changes based on personal preference and the imposition in some cases as in Canada of fines for failing to refer to someone by their preferred gender (a number too great to count) is the leftist’s clever attempt to find refuge in contradiction.
But to be fair, and to continue my genuine tendency to offend all in the left and the right, Candace Owen’s provocative, conservative credentials fell short. When speaking about the LGBTQ, she told Hill that she was okay with the “L” and the “G” and the “B” but not the “T.” To be unhappily more precise, she was okay with transgenderism as long as there were no laws forcing us to address them in the pronoun they desired. Further, Candace rightly noted that transgenderism is a mental disorder (gender dysphoria) and to accept the worldview of the “transgender” community would be akin to accepting a man’s perspective that at night he becomes Batman.
The fundamental problem with provocateurs like Candace, however, is that they end up making deep mistakes in their rhetoric; they end up affirming certain presuppositions and missing the whole point altogether. Candace conquered her guest clearly, but in the process she lost her intellectual soul. While rejecting the Trans community and their agenda, she allowed gays, lesbians and bisexuals to re-imagine their realities as well. And for the Christian, only the Creator can take our realities and change them.
Some of my concerns with Candace is that such voices tend to fade when their vigor for the vitriolic ends. To be a provocateur in our day takes a lot of stamina and we need such voices constantly making the right enemies. But to provoke is an art that is best served with a consistent view of the world. Whether in the name of conservatism or not, we can’t choose which sins we hate less. When we do so, we lose the cause in the end.
