Ignore Candace Owens, Nina Turner, Tim Scott, The Shade Room, & The Breakfast Club
That’s right. Ignore them. Shun them. Turn them off. Don’t follow them online, don’t donate to them, and don’t promote their ventures.
There are differing degrees of self-hate and with these clowns, there are also differing degrees of anti-Blackness.
Each of the aforementioned personalities hate Black people and actively work to harm Black Americans.
Some may not know how anti-Blackness works, and still others may not understand how Black people can be anti-Black, and so let me help those folk understand.
It is easy to understand if politics are used because there are defining lines and definitive actions that clearly represent anti-Blackness.
That is not to say that only republicans can be racist because that idea is absurd in all the ways.
Republican policies are surgically designed to harm Black people as a whole and they target Black individuals such as trans, gay, children, women and girls.
Working at the Black community level we see republicans all over the nation pass laws eliminating teaching Black history, making it harder for Black folk to vote, suspending Black elected officials to utilize their First Amendment rights, enact harsher sentences for crime for us, refuse to expand Obamacare/medicare, and they refuse to dispense funds designated for our communities and instead redirect them to pet republican projects.
Those policies and many others are specifically designed to harm Black people — and those actions are supported by Candace Owens, Charlemagne, Nina Turner and others, and used as comedy fodder by The Shade Room and The Breakfast Club.
They present themselves as the either progressive, Turner, or staunch republican, Owens, but both use their platforms to harm Black people. Oh, they each loudly proclaim they are working to improve Black lives but they aren’t doing any such thing and they know it.
Turner habitually runs for office despite being resoundingly rejected time after time by voters -all voters but especially Black voters who want nothing to do with her foolishness. Seeing her buck-dancing during one of her campaign events and hearing her say that “Voting for Biden is like eating a bowl of shit” are defining moments in a career short on accomplishments and long on grievances. Given that she has long hitched her success to two-time losing presidential candidate Bernie Sanders just further proves she works hard to alienate Black voters and Black people with her contrarian positions.
Candace Owens is an online figure who decided that the best way for her to make money was to establish a foothold in republican media and use her time to bash anything and everything having to do with Black people and blackness. This is after she used the NAACP to help with a discrimination lawsuit years ago. Funny how that works.
Candace Owens has accomplished nothing, done nothing, contributed nothing, has no successes to share, and is nothing more than an online provocateur who white conservatives use to push their racist, antisemitic, homophobic, and anti-trans hate. She is a mouthpiece for white supremacy and she uses her platform to spew vile at Black Americans. She takes the checks and does exactly as massa wants her to do. Those pats on the head must do wonders for her esteem.
The Breakfast Club hosts— on radio and YouTube — include a grifter named Lenard Larry McKelvey who absurdly goes by the handle Charlamagne tha god, is a loud-mouth duplicitous lightweight who wants to be important but who has nothing to offer except silly takes, senseless contrarian clownery, and vile anti-Black woman comments. He hates all women but saves his worst vitriol for Black women. He has been accused of rape of an underage girl who was 15 at the time — he accepted a plea deal and probation — though she is has an active lawsuit against him. Lenard seems to also really dislike VP Kamala Harris, becoming one of the many people who committed some type of sexual assault who also vehemently dislike the vice president who as DA and AG made a point of prosecuting men like him. His interview skills are not even as good as a middle school newspaper reporter has, and his ability to talk deep on issues — any issue — is tantamount to reading half a sentence on any issue then thinking he is an expert.
The Shade Room is an online gossip website that traffics in salacious half-truths, innuendo, and clickbait tabloid headlines. The site is a cesspool that seek to provide an entertaining and street-level approach to delivering dirty and salacious news about celebrities, athletes, and politicians. Most of their targets are Black and POC who dred seeing their name and photos are the latest target of the gossip website and trending across social media.
The garbage they push, like The Breakfast Club, is slanted to harm the targets but disguise it with “humor” and “shit-talking”, so that the ugliness is an aftertaste that sticks with the reader/listener long after the ingest the their crap. They are the mean comedians who proclaim they are “Just joking” and who when faced with criticism like to blame the audience for either not getting the joke or being too sensitive.
Their act was tired five years ago and it is long past it’s end date now. The site has been called out by Black celebrities for years.
Tim Scott is the elected version of Herschel Walker. A tiny man with little to offer other than his votes for republican legislation and a soft head for republicans to pat when he does their bidding. Scott is mostly a nobody to the country at-large but inexplicably he tossed his hat into the 2024 presidential election by announcing he plans to run for president against Joe Biden. Tim is another puppet of the party who will do anything except support policies that appeal to Black voters.
Tim is the elected version of folk like Herschel Walker, Larry Elder, Luther Campbell, Killer Mike, Kanye, Stephen A. Smith, those Black clergy who prostrated themselves to Trump, and any Black person who works for Fox News or the New York Post.
They have little to no real power but that doesn’t stop them from pushing anti-Blackness for a little coin, views, and advertisers, because in America there is always a market for anti-Blackness.
The grifters have found their personal sweet spot that sees them disparage Black people and politicians with regularity and with the language and words that is AAVE — African American Vernacular English — that catches the attention of Black people. They weaponize our language to use it against us as they push republican and russian negative talk points about Black politicians, democrats, and Black celebrities and athletes.
And foreign players use their template to attack us and suppress our votes, as we saw in 2016 and 2020 on Facebook where the vast majority of political attack, voter suppression, and disinformation ads were directed to Black people.
It is vile and disgusting but it is paying their bills and helping their owners I guess. But what is worse is that the grifters words and videos are used by republicans as digital “Gotcha” attacks on Black people in walks of life.
We’ve all gotten Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram messages from republican friends, coworkers, or family sharing something anti-Black and/or Anti-Democratic from one of the buffoons mentioned in this article. It is infuriating, offensive, and something we all wish would not happen because we are tired of answering for such clownery.
It is especially egregious when our white friends and family ask us to comment on such tripe because we want them to instantly recognize that stuff for what it is and not depend on us to translate, explain, or be a sounding board for them to express how those folk are harming Black folk.
We know. We been knew. And we don’t want to explain it over and over again to our white friends. We’d rather you use that energy toward your white friends and family who statistically fall into ~80% of white men and 53% of white women who have consistently voted republican since 1965 and are the actual cause of every problem in the nation.
They have real power, while those mentioned in this article have limited influence and almost no power, no matter how loud they are and no matter how often right-wing media and personalities promote them as the “Real voices of the Black community.”
What they can do though is aid voter suppression and gerrymandering enough to peel away just enough Black voters which helps republicans maintain control in a mayoral, school board, or district election. And when that happens each of the provocateurs will then say that the democrats lost because they didn’t woo them, didn’t work for their vote, and aren’t interested in policies that helps Black people.
Rinse, repeat.
None of them are serious about politics beyond establishing a foothold in rightwing circles where the money flows to anyone and anybody who will consistently deliver anti-Black content.
The Black community have been identifying and naming folk like them since the 1600’s. There are terms we use in our community and any Black person reading this will know what I am talking about so there’s no need for me to list them here.
With the 2024 elections right around the corner we will begin to see and hear from this group of loud mouths with increasing frequency. They’ll call out President Joe Biden for being old, for advocating for the 1994 crime bill that our parents and grandparents also advocated for, and for supporting the Ukrainian government while supposedly not supporting the Black community.
They will push the false narrative about Vice President Kamala Harris of “Being invisible” while they pretend they don’t know what she does or how she contributes to the administration as they work for the betterment of the Black community and Black girls and women.
They will use any current crime in the Black community and blame the administration for lack of care and concern for Black folks. And they’ll dig up every bad statistic for housing, gun violence, healthcare, schools, homeownership, student loans, and any negative news involving a Black athlete or celebrity they way they did with Brittney Griner or Will Smith, or the current WorldStar video making social media rounds.
They will use any awful republican act, law, speech, or action and blame democrats for allowing republicans to be so racist and vile.
They will downplay or ignore any accomplishment by democrats by saying it is not enough, is too little or too late, or accuse democrats of pandering.
It is not that all Black people do or have to think alike or even vote alike on local, state, or federal levels. And it is not that the democratic party is perfect for Black people or that all democratic candidates work exclusively on improving the lives of Black people. We know that despite being the only party that actively works to help Black people — and all Americans — the party and its apparatus can and must do better.
There are far too many Black people left out of an improving America. Our histories are being erased in Florida, Texas, Missouri, Mississippi, Arkansas, and <insert every republican-led state>, we are being targeted by white supremacists and their cousins the police. Our votes are still being suppressed and gerrymandered, and our kids school’s still receive less funding, more policing, and more underpaid teachers.
We know our books are being banned, our college applications are being denied, and we are still paid less than our white counterparts. Our homes are valued less, our credit scores are lower, we receive worse healthcare, and Black women die giving birth at an alarming rate that is significantly higher than white women’s rates.
What they won’t tell you is that each of the aforementioned issues are priorities democratic party and Biden/Harris administration and actions have been taken and more will be taken if they are elected to another term.
Unlike republicans who only work on three issues — guns, abortions, tax breaks for the wealthy — the democratic party is a multifaceted party that works to improve the lives off all Americans and as a result the party has many issues and priorities.
When the entire nation depends on one party for progress, the work is never ending, daunting, and necessarily prioritized and organized. And democrats can only do what they can when they have enough votes in the house and senate, and if they have a president who will sign their legislation into law. And if they have enough judges who will not strike down the new laws, and if they have a majority on the supreme court who will allow the law to stand.
And guess how all those variables are achieved?
By Voting.
That’s it. It’s not sexy or exciting, but it remains the only effective legal way to effect positive change in this country.
And it takes work, not rabble-rousing online for clicks and views. But therein lies the issue. It is easy to criticise and do nothing.
So when the talking heads and clickbait writers spout the same anti-Black talking points as republicans, fox news, and russian media, then they should also be scorned and ignored, ridiculed and pushed back, and called out and shouted down because they are actively harming real life Black babies, children, women, and men.
They side with the party and foreign operatives who want us forever subservient, unemployed, unable to get healthcare or fair loans, and who believe it is fine for us to be shot down by police and gun-toting freaks and fascists.
They are not our little friends no matter how much their clickbait headlines make you laugh, or how much Lenard on the Breakfast Club says something so obviously false and offensive while chuckling before later wimping out and saying he was just joking. Or Nina Turner spending her time trolling on Twitter because she has nothing better to do than criticize people elected where she couldn’t get elected because her policy choices and opinions aren’t wanted where she lives.
Or queen troll Candace Owens spewing vile hatred while trolling any topic that gives her a reason to share her hatred for all things Black American, all things democratic party, and all things decent because she knows she can continue to be the “pick me” Black women for racists.
Our lives, our ability to live in peace, to work and be paid fairly, to receive good healthcare, to be taught our history in school, and to have access to Black author’s books, are priorities of only one political party.
The naysayers and trolls at The Shade Room, The Breakfast Club, and loudmouths like Candace Owens and Stephen A. Smith will always have a platform on contrarianism of nothingness.
It is up to voters to ignore their messages of defeat and soft-pedaling ineffective GOP policies while downplaying real democratic accomplishments.
