Candace Owens, right-wing social media commentator is attempting to overhaul her image. Rebranding is what it is called in the world of marketing. Owens wants Black America to know that she is just like us. Sort of.

Owens is on what appears to be an “apology tour,” but there has not been one apology made yet. First she appeared on the “Joe Budden” podcast. Then she popped up for nearly two hours with Charlamagne, DJ Envy, and Jess Hilarious on “The Breakfast Club.” Rumor has it that Owens will be making an appearance on Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay.”

Owens, who was celebrated as “the new face of Black conservatism” and “ultra conservative,” who never gave Black media the time of day, is courting its favor and attention? What is really going on here? What is obvious is that Owens wants something. But will Black America give it to her?

Owens has been problematic since stepping onto the scene in 2020 after the very public murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. She was very vocal – and wrong – on social media in her assessment of Floyd. On Facebook, Candace made the erroneous deduction that Black America turned a “drug addict into a hero,” because we have a warped sense of morality and standards. Then she connivingly stated that Floyd did not die because of ex-Minneapolis police officer Derrick Chauvin’s knee being positioned on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes. According to Owens, it was chemical substances like meth and fentanyl that led to Floyd’s demise, not Chauvin – defying what the entire world saw when the video of the merciless killing went viral.

As criticism against her heatedly transpired, Owens doubled down and continued to feed the right-wing voices that supported Chauvin, villainizing Floyd and troubled Black men like him. The thing is, no one denied that Floyd had a substance abuse addiction. Neither did anyone in Black America deny that Floyd had a rap sheet. However, in America, every citizen is afforded the right to have his or her day in a court, not slaughtered on the streets by an overzealous and crazed officer of the law in the most famed democracy in the world.

She didn’t stop there. In 2022, Owens released a documentary titled “The Greatest Lie Ever Sold” about the origins of the Black Lives Matter organization that was founded following Floyd’s death. In it she continued to disparage and cast him as a cloudy, criminal figure. In 2019, during the U.S. House Subcommittee hearing, Owens told Congress that “White supremacy and White nationalism is not a problem that is harming Black America.” Owens struck again when she opined that Breonna Taylor, murdered by Louisville police, was a known drug dealer and that law enforcement had solid evidence that Taylor was running drugs out of her apartment. Owens hopped on social media to justify the police officers’ actions, implying that Taylor’s death was her own fault.

Owens, however, was not really talking to us. She was speaking directly to that faction of White Americans who believe that “all lives matter” and that “blue lives matter” – that is until the insurrection on Capitol Hill on Jan., 2021, when Capitol Hill police were beat, tazed, maced with bear spray, and trampled upon. Owens was speaking directly to Donald Trump supporters and the Make America Great Again crowd. Owens has never been secretive about her affection nor her affiliation with everything Trump and MAGA. But even after the insurrection, and all the evidence that has come out since that has unequivocally proven Trump masterminded the attempt to overthrow democracy, Owens continued to cuddle up to MAGA. Making an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s primetime show a couple of months after the failed insurrection, she compared the Jan. 6 assault to the Reichstag building being torched by fire in Germany in 1933, saying that Democrats would somehow forcefully proceed to take over Congress, ousting Republicans because of the incident, erroneously linking Democrats to the Nazis. The Reichstag was the central meeting place of the German parliament. An arsonist set it ablaze on Feb. 27, 1933.

Yet it wasn’t the Democrats who stormed Capitol Hill. It was Trump supporters. Candace Owens continued riding the MAGA train, touring the country, giving lectures at colleges and universities, hitting the right-wing conservative talk show circuit, and soon published her first book. Her rhetoric against Black America was a betrayal that awarded Owens the ire and perpetual Michelle Obama side eye. But Owens won the support and financial backing of MAGA white Americans because she re-enforced everything negative and stereotypical that they ever thought about Black Americans and could not repeat publicly for fear of recrimination. Landing a cushy job with “The Daily Wire” in 2021, Owens probably thought that her role as the MAGA Black “It Girl” was cemented as she came into the homes of millions of Trump supporters doing what she does best: throwing tomatoes at Black culture and pumping up white America.

All that changed when “The Daily Wire” unceremoniously dumped Owens over her stance regarding the Israel-Hamas war. Owens went on air in recent months calling the devastation occurring in Gaza “a genocide” and subsequently criticizing Israel’s actions. This did not sit well with “Daily Wire” co-founder Ben Shapiro. Now Owens is knocking on the doors of Black media. What does she want from us? Does she think that appearing on a couple of already questionable Black podcasts will get her an invitation to the Family cookout? If that is her strategy, it should be the duty of Black media to ferociously remind Black America of this supposed prodigal daughter’s poisonous tongue and her affiliations, ensuring that this viper finds no home.