Charlie Kirk Said Black People Thrived as Slaves

The Claim

The source of this claim comes from a conversation from the Jubilee podcast (which I am not a fan of, and would not recommend at all) between Charlie Kirk and a female student, Naima. It begins around the timestamp 1:19:00 and end around the timestamp 1:29:00.

Toward the end of the conversation, Naima asked Charlie Kirk if he was saying that black people thrived under subjugation: “So I’m sorry, are you saying that blacks thrive under subjugation?”

Many now say that this is what Charlie Kirk said or thought. It is not.

Many say that this was said about slavery, but it was not. It was specifically about “subjugation,” the word Naima used, and in a specific context.

Immediately after that accusation was thrown at Charlie Kirk, he denied it. But let’s look at what he was arguing before that accusation was put to him.

The Context

The debate was centrally about affirmative action. Charlie argued that the fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal protection under the law, but that affirmative action was meant to give certain people an extra boost based on their skin-color or racial background. This, he claimed, undercut the fourteenth amendment.

Naima said that affirmative action would help heal the damages of slavery. Charlie argues that the data tells a different story – that even for all the evil black people experienced, economically and in terms of family cohesion, they were better off in the 1950s (Naima agreed that this was indeed the case). This, he said, showed that the idea that affirmative action helped black people is a flawed premise.

Charlie puts the question to her: What was the primary change from the 1950s until the present day which diminished the conditions of black people so much? Did America become more racist? Or was it the disappearance of the black father? Naima moved to talk about the war on drugs.

Charlie, after some back and forth, made the claim that police discrimination and the war on drugs wasn’t the primary cause for the plight of black people in modern America. He pointed to an underlying cultural problem, where black people, who make up roughly 13 percent of the population, account for approximately 50 percent of the murders.

Naima’s essential claim at this point was that it is obviously all of the residual subjugation, up until 1965, that caused black people’s situation. Charlie puts another question to her in response: “Of course they have an impact, but it’s more on you to explain why things got worse since the Civil Rights Act. More violent, less fathers around, poorer. Why is that?” He also circles back to the murder figure mentioned earlier. He asked, why are there more murders, more dead bodies in the black community, than in any other communities? Because you can’t blame that on tougher policing, as Naima first tried to do, because tougher policing doesn’t make sense of more dead bodies.

Naima then moved to talk about redlining:

“Red lining federally mandated or sustained by the FHA separating black Americans to specifically impoverished and relegated areas of the country. We are incapable of buying homes and putting equity into neighborhoods with lower crime rates, and better Educational Systems. We do not have access to things that would uplift and help our community. When you are put in an environment that promotes and reinforces social and economic inequality, you become desperate and are forced to do things that maybe don’t align with your values.

Charlie fired back: “You’re making an excuse for a lot of murder… If you were right, when blacks in America did not have the same rights they had today, they were less murderous, there was less break-ins… why is that?”

And right after he said that, Naima lobbed the accusation: “So I’m sorry, are you saying that blacks thrive under subjugation?”

Charlie then responded:

“No, I’m not. I’m asking you the question. The data shows they were actually better in the 1940s. It was bad, it was evil, but something changed. Black America is worse than it has been in the past 80 years . . . Why is it that the more social welfare we’ve done, we’ve spent 20 trillion on uplifting black communities, we’ve done everything that’s been asked, subsidized housing, Medicaid, public school [funding], subsidized College, we’re talking about 2o trillion have been spent on the Great Society – and yet Black America is poorer, more murderous, more dangerous, so there [has to be] an explanation. I’m asking you to explain this.”

Then the conversation ended.

The Conclusion

Charlie did not say that black people thrived under slavery. That is a lie. Those words never existed his mouth, and when they were thrown at him, he immediately denounced the idea. Charlie’s whole argument was that affirmative action has not worked, and that black people were actually doing better (financially, educationally, in terms of family cohesion) under the evils of the mid-1900s than they are now after decades of the welfare state.