Op-Ed: Was Beyoncé’s Half-time Performance Reverse Racism?

Once upon a time, my white mother and Puerto Rican father were staying at friends’ house, somewhere in North Philadelphia. Suddenly, a mob formed outside. Somehow, word spread there was a biracial couple in the neighborhood, and what began as a small gang turned into a riot. They wanted my parents to leave and never come back, and eventually, the riot got so bad, someone threw a burning mattress into their friends’ yard.

Someone called the police, and, at first, my parents and their friends were relieved to see them come to the door. But when they got there, the police told my parents they agreed with the crowd. They asked why they were there, and told them to leave.

The police left, and my parents didn’t know how they were going to get out without their help. They began to panic, and felt even more scared when they saw some people approach their door with semi-automatic weapons in their hands.

However, the men with guns explained they were with a group called the “October 4th Organization.” Unlike the police, they were not there to intimidate them, but instead defend them from the crowd and help them leave.

My parents trusted these men, and followed them out, beginning to walk home, while trying to ignore the neighborhood rioters that remained. Eventually, as my parents could see their house, they noticed the men with guns had disappeared, not even waiting for a “thank you.”

In the 60’s and 70’s, many organizations, including the Black Panthers, formed to protect people like my parents who the police would not, and sometimes, those the police unlawfully persecuted. These vigilante groups are not a monolith, and their exploits, I’m sure, are just as varied and sometimes corrupt as with any armed force. However, those who bravely stood against an oppressive government do deserve recognition, and if that was Beyoncé’s intention, I salute the effort.

Musical performances, however, hold little political meaning for me, let alone a half-time performance. The pageantry of pop stars changes so often, with soulful, emotional ballads preceding sex-fueled, burlesque-inspired dance numbers, it’s hard enough to know if a meat dress means “meat is murder” or it’s some kind of innuendo.

However, both sides seem to be appropriating the performance to prove their own political agenda: progressives are applauding it as a bold representation of black power, while conservatives are using it to point out the hypocrisies and inconsistencies of the Black Panthers, the Black Lives Matter movement, and even Beyoncé’s husband, Jay-Z.

What people are doing is putting their interpretation on a performance that is already a limited representation of the black experience, that is, of Beyoncé. As the focus of the performance, the “leader” of the dancers wearing Black Panther outfits, one might assume she was fixing herself as a leader of black aggression. But Beyoncé wasn’t performing a rock opera or debuting a song that ever specifically even mentions anything political. This wasn’t “Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” This was one song about how awesome Beyoncé is and how proud she is to be black. Worst case scenario, a child watching the big game for the first time might aspire to one day wear a leather jacket, and a beret, and sing about how awesome they are.

Putting your own political agenda onto any performance or piece of art is slippery business, and must be founded in the sum of its parts, not the supposed adverse effect a few images might have on impressionable viewers. Beyoncé might either admire the Black Panthers as unequivocal Godsends, or as an abstract symbol of black power, but I am inclined to believe the latter, as she put the outfits in question on her background dancers, not on herself. Perhaps that small inclusion would sting for those adversely or unfairly treated by Black Panthers in the past, but as pundits seem more outraged than the general public, it seems the whole thing is more about outrage for the sake of outrage than because of the morally corrupt content being presented.

Vigilante groups will always be lampooned and vilified by those who have no direct experience or knowledge of the good that they do. Perhaps Beyoncé is among those whose praise of vigilantes is more about promoting their idealistic, progressive mission statement than the reality of their actions. However, pundits would do better to address the actions themselves of those groups they think are destructive, hateful or corrupt. For now, I fail to see how the discussion of race improves when an artist is demonized for expressing herself. Beyoncé’s performance was not about politics, or the entire history of the Black Panthers. This performance was about Beyoncé expressing a part of herself in the moment. Any fear mongering is only being done by the left wing alarmists who think our freedom of speech will disappear overnight, or the right wing pontificators, who use every hip hop song that penetrates their PC bubble to point out every perceived pitfall of the progressive movement.

Perhaps, instead of grand-standing over a 4-minute performance, perhaps these pundits would benefit from interviewing Beyoncé or one of her background dancers about their choice of costume for the half-time show. Maybe, just maybe, they would learn something about the lived-in experience of black America, rather than just talking about one small expression of it.