Candace Owens Says British Colonization of Africa Was a 'Net Positive'

Conservative commentator Candace Owens said the British colonization of Africa "ended up being a net positive" while defending the royal family amid revived criticism over their role in English imperialism over the centuries.

Following the September 8 death of Queen Elizabeth II, detractors have spoken out about the global impact of British imperialism. They have also demanded the return of "stolen" precious jewels to former colonies. Following the "Scramble for Africa" in the 1880s, Britain came to control an estimated 30 percent of the continent's population, and a number of African kingdoms were destroyed.

Scholars also argue that many nations in Africa and around the world continue to endure the malign effects of colonialism. The ongoing debate on Britain's colonial history and the royals led to Owens being asked for her opinion on the subject during Wednesday's episode of her talk show, Candace.

"What are your thoughts on the concerns people have with the British royal family and their history with colonization?" a viewer asked.

After noting that the royal family doesn't have any "real power," Owens said: "The real truth of the reason why people hate the queen has nothing to do with colonization.... Which, by the way, just to be clear, the Brits invading Africa actually represents—and this is going to get me in trouble—but it was, if you look at how forward it brought the African colonies, it ended up being a net positive.

"Now, this is of course—this is going to get me in trouble, because people somehow think Africans were living happily ever after and things were great and the horrible English, British descended upon and murdered everybody and the French suddenly murdered everybody, and that just isn't the truth, obviously. African nations had slavery just like Europeans had slavery.

"So it's an evil that was not started, did not begin in Europe, actually," she went on. "It can actually be traced back to Muslim origins. And, for whatever reason, people have this fantastical rendition of history where they think that it was only white people that ever did anything bad when, in fact, the truth is that even in terms of our own history, American history, it was the Africans who were selling the Africans to the Europeans. And usually for things as basic as gin and mirrors."

Owens also said that "it was white men that were the first in the world to abolish the slave trade, right? People don't like that fact, it's a very inconvenient fact from the narrative that white people are evil and backwards.

"They were not the first to do it but they were the first to end it. That's the truth. I think it was France first, followed by the U.K., followed by America that ended the slave trade. It was actually Africans that fought and said, No, we want to maintain this system of slavery because it is good for us.

"So this is something, as I said, that can be traced back to people just being extremely ignorant about history," Owens said. "Because everything...literally has been transformed into a black and white narrative, pun very much intended."

Kehinde Andrews, a professor of Black studies at Birmingham City University's School of Social Sciences in the U.K., condemned Owens' remarks, calling them "nonsensical."

"Candace Owens has built a career out of being the Black face of white racism, so these comments are not a surprise," Andrews, the author of Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century, told Newsweek.

"It is also ironic she accuses others of being ignorant when she displays a complete lack of knowledge on the topic she has inserted herself into," he said. "For a start, the first country to abolish slavery was Haiti, after its revolution. The idea that Africans were involved in the slave trade is so nonsensical it barely bears responding to. Do we absolve the Nazis from the Holocaust because there were Jewish collaborators?

"The truth is, the queen, along with the nation, derived her wealth from the enslavement of Africans and violent colonialism in the largest empire that the world has ever known," Andrews continued. "She was a symbol of that brutal history—and continued exploitation—who paraded around in the jewels looted in the colonies."

Any dislike for the queen, he said, "is not about her as a person but the racist system that she represented."

Newsweek reached out to Owens for a response to Andrews' remarks.