If You Haven’t Heard Of Conservative Superstar Kemi Badenoch, You Need To.

I heard about Kemi from my mom over the weekend, and have been gobbling up stories about her ever since. Like this one – from Zoe Strimpel.

Kemi launched a campaign to run for Britain’s new prime minister to replace Boris Johnson recently, but was eliminated with not enough votes. Based on what I’ve seen of her so far though, she would’ve been a fantastic choice. According to the sourcelink, she’s been described as the “Tory Barack Obama” – and whether that has to do with the fact that she’s black or that she’s extraordinarily eloquent, or something else entirely – I have no idea. But she’s also been referred to by critics as Labour’s “worst nightmare” and the “antiwoke crusader” and on that count, she is DECIDEDLY un-Obama-like.

She’s fantastic. She’s the daughter of two doctors, she spent time in Nigeria as well as the United States growing up, and worked at McDonald’s to fund her college education. Here she is addressing critical race theory.

Her personal hero? Thomas Sowell. I mean, need I say more? Here’s my favorite part from the sourcelink, where she just is completely unimpressed by the ostensible originator of Critical Race Theory:

All of which is why, in 2019, when Badenoch found herself on stage at an ideas festival in Wales with Kimberlé Crenshaw, the American legal scholar who coined the term “intersectionality,” sparks flew—and not in a romantic way. Badenoch had never heard of her, wasn’t embarrassed about it (to Crenshaw’s surprise), and was unimpressed. “I was struck by how limited her worldview was on race. All she knew was American politics. When I told her that black kids do better than white working-class students in the UK, she didn’t believe it,” she recalled. For people like Crenshaw, Badenoch said, the oppression of black people is the norm. To defy that norm is to betray one’s blackness. “The success of people like me and other black conservatives is basically a denial of their own personal experience,” Badenoch told me. “They don’t want us to exist.”

There is a cost to such wrongthink. “I am very happy to debate with people who disagree with me. But people who disagree with me would rather I just didn’t have a voice,” she said. “There have been so many attempts to cancel me, attempts to portray me as a bigot.

She’s definitely someone to watch. So watch her! 🙂