For sane and self-aware Black people, the most natural of all political reflexes is to feel hatred towards Candace Owens. She certainly does everything she can to inspire intense hostility. By all appearances, standing in opposition to us and everything that matters to us is not merely her vocation, it is her religion. Our contempt is her bankable currency.
But we must proceed with caution. Once committed to our wholly justified animus toward her, we find ourselves generating a surplus of hostility- more than enough to spread around to Larry Elder, Clarence Thomas and the rest of the old-school-shuffling-crew. They deserve it, after all, because they are the ones who laid and greased the tracks for her inflated profile and outsized role in American political discourse. They made her the official mascot of Black conservatism for the social media age.
As is the case with all surpluses, we will find a way to spend that excess hostility wherever we can. But there is a real risk of spending it recklessly and burning ourselves out in the process. We have recently discovered that our contempt for Black conservatives is so durable that it even outlasts death. Many of us still curse the name of Herman Cain long after he literally surrendered his life to perform one last lap dance for Donald Trump and the party he commands. Whether they project the scholarship and sophistication of Thomas Sowell or the incendiary jingoism of Alan West, Black conservative public figures are all selling the same precious commodity: white innocence. And nothing enrages conscious Black folks more than having narratives of white innocence pushed in front of us. And our adversaries know that.
But what does scorning Black conservatives profit us? We should ask ourselves that question and find an answer that does not leave us standing in the same place we have been since our great-grandparents were dreaming of better days for us. Relative to the predominant population we are in pretty much the same position today as we were a century ago in terms of economic efficacy and political power. Against that backdrop, our hostility toward these turncoats is justified. But we must be mindful of the fact that our derision of them in public is doing the bidding of their puppet-masters almost as faithfully as their soft-shoe dance routines are. But unlike the “uncle toms” we revile, we get absolutely nothing out of the exchange beyond cathartic gratification. And we can neither deposit catharsis in the bank nor add it to our vote tally in a “swing state.”
No serious person can dispute that folks who harbor ill-will toward Black folks are served when we turn our hostilities toward one another — regardless of the reason and irrespective of the context. That is why Fox News revels in reporting on gun violence in Chicago after particularly bloody weekends. But Black on Black contempt is a reality in the same way that “Black on Black crime” is pure mythology. After all, so-called “Black on Black crime” occurs in equal statistical proportion to “White on White crime” but that is a phrase never uttered and a concept never considered. Meth-heads in Minnesota commit crimes in service of their addictions exactly like crack-heads in California do.
On the basis of our self-contempt, Black folks have been dealing with each other with violence, depravity and disregard for centuries. From plantation culture way back in the day to prison culture in the present day we have practiced inflicting grave physical, emotional and psychological injury. This dynamic is hard-wired but we need to re-wire it because during all of that time, we have never come close to achieving parity with the men that founded and funded this nation on our backs.
Perhaps legitimate and lasting parity is an impossibly steep mountain to climb but conscientious Black folks know that we are duty bound to try. And we will never make it to base camp if we keep burning the energy we desperately need for the climb fighting intramural battles wherein victory brings no prize. Attacking Candace Owens is perfectly useless when we could and should be attacking the legislators in our respective districts by name who are passing bills to suppress our votes and highjack our political progress.
While I disagreed with both the premise and the thesis of Charles Blow’s book “The Devil You Know” he offered the invaluable observation in the first chapter that outrage is an expensive emotion. He posits that it is exhaustive to the point of chronic inefficiency and it cannot, therefore, sustain any long term objective. To wit: it takes a great deal more than hating your adversaries to achieve victory over them- even if those adversaries are begging you to hate them. Black conservatives do little more than trigger outrage and should be treated with the same level of seriousness that we treat our annoying colleague who thinks it is cute to bring her unruly little dog to the office. It may be noisy, it may be irritating, it may not even be house-broken, but in the end, her pet is not changing anything about how the office runs. Black conservatives are that pet.
To be fair, I recognize the allure of being a Black conservative. At some point on your personal or political journey you are told by some person some version of this fairytale:
You are different, and therefore better than those other Blacks. They see themselves as victims, but not you. You stand on your own two feet and think for yourself with that big beautiful black brain of yours. Those others are always begging or blaming the White man when they should be more like you: taking responsibility for yourself like a true American. And because of all that, you can really be a star in our political party or on our lecture circuit. You can help deliver some of your people from the weakness and ignorance of liberalism. The Democrats are the true racists because THEY were the party of the Klan and Confederacy, after all. And we were the party of Lincoln.
Imagine that you are a Black person of meager talent but grand ambition and you hear that message from a credible source. That is an easy sell. You are likely to buy that story- even if it means smiling and glad-handing with unrepentant racists. The trade-off is probably worth it to you. But should any consternation begin to dampen the enthusiasm for this faustian bargain, there must be a soothing internal dialogue along these lines:
Why be just another anonymous Black person who votes Democrat when I can be important? Those who scorn me are just jealous of my platform, position and profile, so to hell with them. I believe in God and go to church anyway- so this is truly where I belong. And wasn’t Frederick Douglass a Republican? Yeah, I am just like Frederick Douglass…
This is the reason why Michael Steele can be so thoroughly misused and abused by the Republican Party, join the Lincoln Project to help defeat Donald Trump, yet still cling to his membership in the GOP. Rick Wilson and Steve Schmidt were the biggest names in the Lincoln Project and they formally withdrew from the party as soon as Trump gobbled it down and defecated the putrid mess it is now. This was after the likes of George Will, Joe Scarborogh and Nicole Wallace all turned in their red shirts and decided to play “skins” (because of course wearing the blue shirt was still a bridge too far.) But Michael Steele just can’t let go.
Steele was unceremoniously dumped as Republican National Committee Chair after the GOP took back the House under his leadership. Current RNC Chair Ronna Romney-McDaniel lost the House, lost the Senate and lost the presidency in consecutive elections and was re-elected to another term. If anybody should be flushing their GOP affiliation, it should be Michael Steele. Alas, he hangs on. He knows that if he doesn’t, he could sink into the abyss of anonymity as just one of millions of Black folks who could never tolerate locking arms with trolls like Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and Mitch McConnell. For those who thrive on the attention, that is too much to bear.
To be sure, this pathology runs deep. And because this current window of opportunity to make permanent progress is rapidly closing, we are far better served by just leaving them to wallow in it by themselves. We simply have too much work to do to revile or rescue them at the same time. Summation: Just ignore these Black conservatives. Leave them the hell alone and their value to their puppet-masters will be greatly compromised. That will hit much harder than calling them names on social media. And we still have a mountain to climb.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of David Saint Vincent's work on Medium.