Recently, I read an article that made me laugh out loud; I thought it was a satire piece. But then my heart sunk a little the same way it did when I realized Donald Trump’s presidential bid wasn’t just one big joke. As I read, I was appalled at the lack of factual evidence, and that it actually held a ridiculous amount of untrue information. So here we go, my response (and corrections) for the piece “Beyoncé Goes Full-On Racist For The Super Bowl Halftime Show: How liberals hijacked the Super Bowl halftime show to further divide our country.” The article starts off a bit like this:
“In the latest racial controversy in America, Beyoncé decided to go full-on racist and join the militant Black Panthers movement during the nationally televised Super Bowl 50 halftime show.”
Isn’t it kind of sad that white men are so entitled they think that a performance by a black woman which celebrates her blackness is “racist”? Beyoncé didn’t “join” the Black Panther Party; she was celebrating the 50th anniversary of their formation. In fact, the Black Panther Party was initially called the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. If you know anything about African American history, you should know that prior and during the Civil Rights Era, police brutality in black communities was incredibly high. In 1963, police literally used high-powered hoses on children as young as 7 or 8 years old, solely because they were singing/participating in a non-violent protest. The Black Panthers were created as a way to defend and protect black communities from this violence.
“The “Formation” that Beyoncé and all her backup dancers got into was an X, which was a reference to the bigoted maniac Malcolm X, who believed in racial segregation, black supremacy, and the universal vilification of white people. Malcolm X was a terrible, disgusting, racist display of humanity who even called white people “white devils.””
Want to hear something incredible? Black people never had to “vilify” white people, white people did that themselves by enslaving and imposing inhumane and oppressive laws against black people and their rights as human beings. Shocking, I know. But that doesn’t even matter, because while Malcolm X called for a separate community apart from his oppressors where black people could live peacefully, free from racism, you’re actually missing a huge point here. Malcolm X actually retracted some of his previous statements regarding “white devils,” but resisted saying this publicly at first in order to support Martin Luther King Jr. in his efforts in Selma. Malcolm X essentially told Coretta Scott King: Let me be the bad guy/extremist in the government’s eyes, that way they’ll go after me and let King continue to influence the (Civil Right’s) Movement.
“Beyoncé, along with the help of her backup dancers, who were all black, performed the song “Formation.” If you didn’t buy the racist comment, let me display a few of the lyrics.
I come to slay, bitch
I like cornbreads and collard greens, bitch
You mix that negro with that Creole
make a Texas bama
I like my baby heir with baby hair and afros
I like my negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils
When he f*ck me good I take his ass to Red Lobster, cause I slay
Drop him off at the mall, let him buy some J's
Nothing like a bunch of anti-black stereotypes and racial slurs being put out there by a black public figure.
What a great “role model.””
Here’s the deal with those “anti-black stereotypes”: Beyoncé is embracing them instead of letting them tear her down. She’s saying that she isn’t ashamed to be black despite all the negative stereotypes that affect her as a black woman. She is using this little thing commonly called “word re-appropriation” or “word reclamation”. This has happened in many groups of people within many subcultures. It’s why girls playfully call each other “b*tches” or why some members of the LGBTQ+ community identify as “queer." I’m going to leave this nifty little link here, in case you need help better understanding the concept.
Moving along, the article includes some pieces comparing Beyonce’s performance to that of a bible-thumping country singer or the KKK (uh, what?), and it’s just such a tangled mess of ignorance. I can hardly fathom a person could be this coddled and uneducated. I will add, however, that Beyonce has done an excellent job of not hunting down, torturing, and burning people on a cross because of their race, unlike the KKK. Woo!
The article goes on to criticize the video for “Formation” a bit, particularly the scene in which a young boy stands in front of a line of police and raises his hands in surrender, and the police eventually do too.
“Throughout the video, Beyoncé performs while standing on top of a police car as it sinks into a flooded neighborhood during Hurricane Katrina, a reference to her belief that white government officials should be blamed for the disaster.
The video also shows white cops surrounding and intimidating a black child as he stands next to a wall that has “stop shooting us” spray-painted on it.”
Where do I begin? Given that this person likely has little to no knowledge on what structural and environmental racism is, I’ll try to explain this in simple terms. Beyoncé is sitting on a car that is sinking, not because she blames officials for the disaster, but because she is from New Orleans, and communities which had a high black population received significantly less and slower aide, both during and after Hurricane Katrina. When black people went to find food, they were reported as "looters", whereas white people were said to have simply "found" food despite doing the exact same thing. Beyoncé is highlighting the presence of this thing called environmental racism, which up until now, you might not have known existed thanks to your privilege.
And yes, there is a scene that displays the words "stop shooting us". Want to know why? Because black people are tired of seeing their loved ones being shot and/or killed by police. In 2015, black males made up 6 percent of the U.S. population, and accounted for 40 percent of all unarmed people fatally shot by police. That isn't to say that white people don't get killed by police; after all, white people are the majority in this country. However, black people are more than three times as likely to be killed by police than white people. Beyoncé isn't insulting police solely because they are police; she's acknowledging that there's a serious issue at hand regarding how many unarmed black men are being killed by police every year. 
What’s cute is how they go on to say:
“The most pathetic part of this whole circus is that in no way does it help the black and African American community. This performance only increases racial tension within the United States and helps promote the black vs. white narrative that the left wants”.
Wow, man. You’ve completely changed the game. Why didn’t we have you around to help solve the issue of racism before?
This might be a big shocker, but I’m gonna let you in on a little secret: a white individual literally has no idea what it is like to endure racism from a systematic level. No white person has any right whatsoever to tell black people how to solve their problems regarding racial inequity. And quite frankly, if a person cannot see that, they're part of the problem.
The article ends with one line:
“America just wants to watch some damn unadulterated football”.
How dare Beyoncé interrupt your precious football with a performance that pays homage to her roots! What an abomination!
It’s time to get real. If a half-time performance dedicated to honoring black culture during Black History Month really inconveniences you that much, you have some serious thinking to do. Black people exist, and them paying tribute to their history and communities isn’t racist or “anti-white”; the fact that you throw a tantrum about it, blame “liberals” for it, and then try to tell black people on how to deal with racism in America, is racist.
This response is loaded with links to helpful, reliable resources on everything which I’ve critiqued. Hopefully some of you will be able to click on the links and become more educated and socially conscious individuals. If not, that’s too bad, but I can see that ignorance is bliss, and not everyone is ready to give up living in a shiny, privileged bubble.
