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Liberal commentator Dr. Marc Lamont Hill joined conservative pundit Candice Owens on her PragerU podcast Sunday to discuss whether the Black Lives Matter movement and many other politically controversial subjects.
After noting that she has often called for more dialogue between black conservatives and liberals, Owens added that Hill — a tenured professor of media studies at Temple University — was one of the very few who agreed.
The two began by discussing the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, with Owens addressing statements she made online about how she did not believe that he deserved “this martyr status” because of his criminal past.
While acknowledging that the two of them were in agreement that the manner in which Floyd died was wrong, Hill said that, for his part, the Minneapolis man’s past life of crime was “beside the point” and “a distraction.”
“To me, whether he was on drugs, whether he robbed ten stores is irrelevant to this particular conversation,” Hill said.
“I think it’s actually very relevant. I wasn’t saying that to overshadow the conversation,” Owens countered, noting that for the first time in a long time both Left and Right were in agreement that the manner in which Floyd died — being pinned by his neck to the pavement by former officer Derek Chauvin’s knee for several minutes — was wrong.
That said, Owens went on to note that she couldn’t get behind all of the protests and the alleged deifying of Floyd because “justice was served” quickly with Chauvin’s arrest.
Also, she said, “if your whole point is defending black lives, this whole platform is supposed to be about black lives, George Floyd spent his entire life harassing black people and destroying black lives.”
Hill said that justice has not yet been done — there’s been no trial yet or convictions of any of the officers involved in Floyd’s arrest and death.
Later, Hill made a point that regardless of Floyd’s past, his life “mattered” to many people and that what he’d done earlier should not take away from that or the horrific manner in which he died.
“No one was saying he was a champion of black people all his life,” Hill noted. “The point was, regardless of who he is, his life mattered, his life was worthy of protection.”
After some back and forth about those points, Owens said that many blacks are “hypocrites” because they only see some black lives as being more important while others — including black children who die from gun violence and other causes in inner cities daily — are largely ignored.
Later still, Hill noted that BLM protests have been going on for years but the mainstream media tends to pay attention only when it smells a controversy and people “are burning s**t down” — a point Owens agreed with.
“I have said that 90 percent of our problem is the media,” Owens claimed.
“At that point though, if your movement is being hijacked and that’s how it’s being portrayed, how do you combat that?” she asked.
“One, you have to decide if you care what the dominant media says, and what political work does that media narrative do,” Hill responded, adding that he didn’t want to “pretend that the rebellions we’re seeing around the country aren’t significant and aren’t valuable.
“I just don’t think they can be the only game in town,” he continued.
“You think these rebellions are good,” Owens interjected.
“Oh, yeah,” Hill said.
“The autonomous cities, the burning and looting of black communities,” Owens continued, “seeing black people that are crying on screen, saying that their neighborhoods are being destroyed — you see that as a good?”
“No,” Hill answered. “What I’m saying is that I see a movement of uprisings around the country as good. Now we can discuss tactically whether each specific act is wise.”
He also said that because “black death is so common” in America, it “often requires the spectacle of violence” in order to get people to pay attention.
The two go on to have a spirited discussion involving several other topics as well, including merit-based college admissions, affirmative action, the politically correct nature of comedy in the country, the “cancel culture,” and the LGBTQ “agenda.”
If I had a network I would put @marclamonthill and @RealCandaceO in a studio and let the cameras role. Every damn night. Probably the healthiest thing for this republic since indoor plumbing. https://t.co/5y5iXZBP6I
— GregGutfeld (@greggutfeld) June 29, 2020
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Jon is a staff writer for BizPac Review with 30 years' worth of reporting experience, as well as an author and U.S. Army veteran. He has a BA in political science from Ashford University and an MA in national security studies/intelligence analysis from American Military University.
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