Candace Owens is a conservative activist and personality who has risen to prominence, despite her career taking a hit after a falling out with Ben Shapiro and the staff of The Daily Wire. While this setback has limited her at times, she seems to be doing well working independently on YouTube.
Candace Owens was born in White Plains, NY, as the third of four children. Not much is known about her childhood, except that she was raised by her mother and grandparents after her parents divorced.
During her time at Stamford High School, Owens received several racist death threats, including one from the mayor’s son. The superintendent of the school called it “horrendous,” and the Owens family sued the Stamford Board of Education in federal court, alleging the city did not protect her rights. This resulted in a $37,500 settlement in January 2008. This experience had a profound impact on Owens and led her to create SocialAutopsy.com in 2016, a website she claimed would expose bullies on the internet by tracking their digital footprints. The site asked users to take screenshots of offensive posts and send them in, where they would be categorized by the user’s name.
Owens used crowdfunding on Kickstarter for the website, but the proposal was immediately controversial, drawing criticism that she was doxing internet users and violating their privacy. Owens dismissed the criticisms.
In response, people began posting Owens’s private details online. With scant evidence, Owens blamed the doxing on progressives. Following this, she earned the support of conservatives like Milo Yiannopoulos and Mike Cernovich. This was a turning point for Owens, who has said several times, “I became a conservative overnight … I realized that liberals were actually the racists. Liberals were actually the trolls … Social Autopsy is why I’m conservative.”
The pushback caused the suspension of funding for Social Autopsy, and the website was never created. In September 2017, Owens launched “Red Pill Black”, a website and YouTube channel promoting black conservatism in the United States. Because of her vocal support of Trump and her shift away from the Left, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk announced that Owens had been hired as the organization’s Director of Urban Engagement. Turning Point’s hiring of Owens occurred amid allegations of racism at Turning Point, which may explain why she only stayed with them for a few years before joining the conservative YouTube channel PragerU, a controversial online platform teaching conservative values and lifestyle.
Owens left PragerU in 2020 to host “Candace,” a show on The Daily Wire, a conservative news outlet and website that hosts a variety of conservative personalities like Ben Shapiro. The episodes were filmed in front of a live studio audience and aired weekly. Notable guests included Donald Trump, UFC president Dana White and U.S. Representative Jim Jordan.
In July 2021, Owens announced the launch of a device called the Freedom Phone, which sold for $500 and was marketed toward Trump supporters. She claimed the phone was “not controlled by Apple or Google.” The device’s launch was criticized by tech publications for a lack of transparency and security concerns. The device was later revealed to be a white-label version of a Chinese smartphone available for $120, and its “uncensorable” PatriApp store was a rebranded version of Aurora Store, an open-source frontend for the Google Play Store.
In August 2022, Owens promoted GloriFi, an “anti-woke” startup bank, at a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event and promoted it on her social media accounts that October. The bank quickly shut down in November after failing to secure additional funding.
Jeremy Boreing announced that Owens would be leaving The Daily Wire in March 2024, a move believed to be related to a string of comments considered antisemitic, culminating in Owens liking a tweet referencing blood libel.
Despite these controversies, Owens seems to be doing well working independently on YouTube again. She also appears to remain in the good graces of Trump and several conservative personalities who have appeared on her YouTube show.