Right-wing provocateur Candace Owens and progressive pundit Marc Lamont Hill squared off recently about Barack Obama’s recent efforts to secure the African-American vote.
Set up by host Piers Morgan, who shared the opinion of some that Obama is trying to shame young Black men into voting for Kamala Harris, Owens said neither Democrat truly represents “blackness.”
“It is fundamentally racist,” Owens said of Obama’s efforts on the set of Piers Morgan Uncensored. “It is something Black people are right to be upset about it. There’s nothing about Kamala Harris or Barack Obama, if we’re being frank, that is Black. There is something that is very cartoonish about them working to blackify a politician before they run for office.”
While polls show that about 7 in 10 Black voters had a favorable view of Harris, 1 in 4 Black men under the age of 50 have expressed support for Trump, a recent poll from NAACP and HIT Strategies found.
If that last number holds, Harris has little chance of winning the presidency, experts say.
“She’s so bad I might just f–k around and vote for Trump,” previously said rapper Lord Jamar, who appeared on the Oct. 18 panel with Owens and Hill. He’s emblematic of the Trump-curious voter Obama and Harris are trying to retain.
“You’ll think you’re going to shame somebody or bully them into voting for this (expletive deleted),” he said Oct. 13 on the Art of the Dialogue.
Hill disputed assertions that Obama was, in essence, ordering Black people to vote for Trump.
“Obama’s not arguing you should vote for Kamala Harris because she’s Black,” he said. “He’s not arguing you should vote for them because you’re Black. In other words, he’s saying you should vote your interests.”
Appearing in Pennsylvania earlier this month, Obama questioned whether misogyny may be playing a part in the lack of excitement from Black men for Harris.
“Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” he told campaign volunteers and officials at a Pittsburgh field office.
Jamar, who identified as a registered independent, resented Obama shaking “your finger of condemnation at us.”
“We’re waking up as Black people,” he said. “We’re thinking for ourselves. I don’t see why we’re trying to give this woman a promotion. I don’t feel like she’s the one. I’m sorry. “
“She’s not Black,” he said, siding with Owens.
Always a controversial figure, Owens has drifted farther right with her recent comments denying the Holocaust.
Her comments represent a fringe element, albeit one that seems to be growing just as America’s political divide widens.
“There’s nothing about Barack Obama’s history that gives him the stepping ground to be talking to the brothers about the Black experience,” Owens said, noting the former president was raised by white grandparents, went to a predominantly white college and had a white girlfriend.
Harris, she said, grew up with an “Indian experience and was proud of that until she ran for office.” Owens lampooned what she said was Harris’ changing accents, depending on the identity and region of voters she’s trying to reach.
“To me, it seems they’re wearing blackface,” she said. “I can’t sort through all of Kamala’s accents. I don’t trust somebody who slips through so many personalities. It’s not OK, and I fully reject it.”
Hill rejected Owens’ claims that Harris is inauthentic or somehow not Black.
“Black people talk differently,” Hill continued, pointing that Black people code switch. “Black people call people auntie. When someone says that’s my aunt, they’re not lying because they don’t share blood.”
“Going to Howard is a Black experience,” he said, referencing the vice president’s alma mater. “Pledging AKA is a black experience.”
