Much has been said and written about Candace Owens in recent weeks after she became celebrated by both megastar Kayne West and President Donald Trump in tweets.
I love the way Candace Owens thinks
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 21, 2018
Candace Owens of Turning Point USA is having a big impact on politics in our Country. She represents an ever expanding group of very smart “thinkers,” and it is wonderful to watch and hear the dialogue going on…so good for our Country!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 9, 2018
But many people may not know the family history behind Owens, communications director for Turning Point USA, a pro-capitalism campus activism group.
In PragerU’s latest video, “Playing the Black Card,” Owens talks about what inspires her to share a message of hard work over playing the victim, and it starts with the story of her grandfather/father figure:
He raised me from the time I was 9 years old. Born in 1941 in rural North Carolina, he started working at age five, laying out tobacco to dry on a sharecropping farm. Jim Crow, separate drinking fountains, and the KKK were ever-present realities.
He was 17 when he married my grandmother. He made a living cleaning homes and office buildings until he saved up enough money to open his own cleaning business.
The thing is, he never played any card. Nor did my grandmother. If they had problems, they didn’t blame anybody. They just fixed them. And they raised me to do the same. …
I am proud that he had the fortitude to turn nothing into something; and I have no intention of reversing that something back into a nothing.
My attitude comes with a price, however. Because if you are born black and you don’t accept your natural status as a victim, then the validity of your blackness is immediately called into question. Well, so be it. …
For the record, my grandfather, now retired, lives in a home that he and my grandmother built on a plot of land they purchased in North Carolina—the very same sharecropping farm that he worked on as a small child.
His story is unique. His story is beautiful. Because it’s American.
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