Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation by Candace Owens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Excellent book and highly informative. Owens has done her homework. I've been aware of much of the history on black Americans that she shares in this book, but there were quite a few parts I was not aware of. While Owens is shaped by her own life experiences, and shares some of those in this book, she is also open-minded enough to be willing to learn and see facts through an unclouded prism. She is willing to call a spade a spade, and yet she is in possession of so many facts relating to the black American experience and history that she makes her points clearly, powerfully, correctly and in an inspiring way. I don't believe it's possible to refute her claims, as history stands on her side, unless, of course, one simply wants to negate history and refuse to change their own biased paradigm.
Some highlighted take-aways:
CHAPTER 1:
-- “Over and over again, somebody else’s real pain or tragedy are reduced to media talking points to further a political agenda. Emotions are elicited and concern is feigned. Until the bigger story comes around.
“This soured my perspective of the world early in life. Fundamentally, I began to believe that the world was happening to me, that I was a tragic Shakespearean figure doomed to fail because of the unfortunate circumstances of my childhood.
“This, quite naturally, let me down a path of liberating myself from any concept of personal responsibility. I drank, I partied, I got into fights. Everywhere in my life I created chaos because chaos came to falsely represent a state of freedom. I felt freed from rules, freed from regulations, freed from any accountability. And because I felt that my life’s narrative had been decided for me, I turned to anorexia to reassert Control.
“For four years I restricted how many calories I consumed. The lighter I felt I could make myself physically, The lighter I felt mentally. I felt freed from the weight of my past. But with time, what was supposed to feel like freedom, began to feel like bondage. I was pretending that a life with no rules made me feel freer when in reality, it made me feel insecure. I was losing more than pounds, I was losing myself. This was “leftism” unleashed.”
-- “The glorification of victimhood is exclusively promoted by the left. It becomes necessary that I first define exactly what I mean when I refer to leftists and liberals throughout this book, and why I will many times use their identities interchangeably.
“Liberalism is defined as a political philosophy based on liberty and equality before the law. It is an allegiance to a set of principles that guarantee those who follow them a society with more individual freedoms. True liberalism pursues principles like the right to life, the right to vote, freedom of speech, etc. When our Forefathers wrote ‘right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ they meant the right to life literally. On behalf of black America I will make the argument that liberalism has only ever been practiced by conservatives in this country.
“Leftism is defined as any political philosophy that seeks to infringe upon individual liberties in its demand for a higher moral good. Leftists concern themselves, not with principle, but with some greater morality that must be achieved. The issue with leftism is that moral goodness is, of course, subjective. Not so long ago, white supremacy was deemed the higher moral good, and in its pursuit leftists infringed upon the rights of black Americans.
“Today, economic equality is the established higher moral good the left is after, and we will soon unpack just how many liberties have been arrested in its pursuit.
“So why are we seeing resurging conservatism throughout Western societies? Because self-described liberals, those who like to view themselves as “centrists,” are realizing that the hallowed middle ground of politics has been consumed by leftism. Leftists have been able to operate under the guise of liberalism by claiming to want a certain type of equality. But demanding economic equality can be accomplished only by infringing upon individual liberties. The nuance here is important. Both liberals and leftists find themselves allied by the concept of equality and an inability to recognize that their goals stand in radical opposition to one another. In essence there is NOTHING more illiberal than leftism, and although many liberals have awoken themselves to this impossible partnership, others remain unable to achieve such clarity.
“Alas, what remains of the doomed union between liberals and leftists exists under the Democrat Party, a political group that champions leftist solutions to the perpetual detriment of Black America. The entire Democrat platform is built upon an everlasting stream of victims vs oppressors, and Black America is their favorite horse to bet on when it comes to jamming through their policies.
“In the left’s over-simplified version of American history Blacks are a permanent underclass who must commit their votes to Democrats politicians for rescuing. Democrats see inherent racism and struggle in nearly everything, thereby destroying nearly all racial progress that has been achieved thus far. The sad truth is that nearly every policy they promote invariably harms Black America. Indeed, there is something about progressive policies that always leads to aggressive results for Black America.
“But what if Black America simply refused their offers? What if we formally rejected the victim narrative, thereby rejecting the slow poison of leftists’ policies? What might happen if Black America collectively called the left’s bluff on racism, thereby reducing their claims of perpetual victim hood to the ill-effected emotional strategy that it is? Could we collectively make a return to our Conservatives roots?”
CHAPTER 4:
-- “In an article titled The Cautionary Tale of Amari Allen, Tom Ascol, the President of Founders Ministries, addressed the Allen controversy and what it said about the current state of our society. He said:
“We live in a hyper-racialized culture that undermines real racial harmony. Those who insist that every offense or slight that takes place, as well as every inequity that exists between racially diverse people is necessarily due to racial injustice, contribute to this combustible situation. All injustice is due to sin, but not all injustice is due to sinful partiality. But when racism is redefined in terms of post-modern power structure formulas, then every failure of those impugned with “whiteness”, is attributed to racial injustice.”
“To say that racial harmony is being undermined is an understatement. Our media pounces at every chance to cover discrimination, because the Ghost of Racism Past has proven to be a profitable model. With money as their motive I suspect they give little thought to what their negativity has inspired among the black youth. They must disregard entirely the fact that their fevered coverage is leading some to spin wild tales in a quest to live up to the hype of their own perceived oppression, while others experiment with self-imposed segregation, and in the process the relationship between white and black Americans continues to fray, neither group benefiting benefiting from the resulting distance between each other.”
CHAPTER 6:
-- “Like like most children who spent the vast majority of their day in classrooms, I looked to my teachers and textbooks to provide a further understanding of the world, and because I attended a public school those answers fit a clearly defined pattern, one that favored black victim propaganda over truth.
“Parents would like to think that schools are safe environments for their children to group up. Having come a long way since the days of Ruby Bridges, few can imagine that inferiority is learned in the classroom. It is. Kids in schools all across this country are being taught the flawed concepts of white privilege and inherent black oppression, that their skin color makes them different. In public schools children are taught that the difference between families like mine, those who live in low income housing buildings, and families like Laura’s is a matter of systemic injustice.
“Over the slow years of our educational brainwashing we are made to believe that slavery, clan rallies, water hoses and attack dogs during the Civil Rights Movement are the prime explanation for ever current ilk that befalls black America today. This packaged theory is applied across the board. The poor are pitted against the wealthy, women are pitted against men, and so forth. This victim vs oppressor method of teaching is particularly detrimental to the spirits of black youth. As it turns out, being told why we will not be held responsible for any of our shortcomings does little n the way of inspiring hard work.
“Of course the schools I went to never bothered to teach me anything that would lead to my concluding that perhaps Laura’s family was well off due to her father’s entrepreneurship, perhaps it was his good life decisions that played a role in his business success. Nor would any of my lessons have explored the inverse culpability of my own parents’ decisions. Perhaps my mother’s lack of a high school diploma and her decision to become pregnant as a teenager may have stifled her early potential. Perhaps my father’s financial irresponsibility contributed to our economic instability. No, the school would have never dated teach a black person about the consequences of personal decision making. Not when the narrative of systemic oppression is so preferred.”
CHAPTER 8:
-- "It is unfortunate that with the all-too fashionable claims of racism and sexism people miss out on opportunities for growth. It is unfortunate that black America in particular, is encouraged to deny that we play any role in our own misfortune, thereby forfeiting realistic means to transform."
CHAPTER 10:
-- “If one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well-governed, if its morals are god our bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer.” - Confucious, as quoted by Candace Owens in Blackout, Chapter 10
There is A LOT more to drink in from this book. Highly Recommend it for ages 16+
View all my reviews
