How to Know You That Bitch: The Passion of Beyoncé
There are tiers to Blackness just as there are tiers to Beyoncé stan-dom. Think of it like Judaism: at the center are those Hasidic guys bobbing their forelocks in prayer, around them are all the yarmulke wearing believers who happen to drive German cars, and then out there in the nether, in the nose bleeds of faith, you got all sorts of agnostics, atheists and pragmatics who, while claiming Jewish, are not planning to skip the bacon on their next Denny’s visit. The same can be said for any social group — there are believers and then there are BELIEVERS. Levels to this shit.
I won’t waste your time modeling the hype trajectory of a Beyoncé release because you understand this already. You understand that to a certain core group of Bey-lievers, Bey is infallible. There is no water porous enough to sink her (unless she says so). There is no hatred black enough to dim her glimmers. No critique or detraction can possibly even scratch the surface of her immaculate perfection. You understand this already. This is the same faith as your grandmother’s. This is prayers before dawn and into the night. This is “thank you, Jesus” and “Allah’u Akbar.” This is magical thought. It’s the transmutation of white boy into blue eyed soul star. There is no logic but it’s own.
Nevertheless, with every Beyoncé release, there is an anti-chorus of critics and self-proclaimed apaths who “do not hate” Beyoncé but must make it clear they do not like her, that they do not identify with her or find her movements authentic much less righteous. “Formation” is no different in this respect.
I will not present yet another list of reasons why “Formation” is a worthy of conversation. Read this, this, or this. I also do not find it necessary to rebuke the accusations of artistic thievery on the part of Beyoncé and the video’s director Melina Matsoukas, but I will say that Chris Black will probably guard his intellectual copyrights more zealously next go round and, in all honesty, I’d never heard of him or his documentary until now.
No, I’m blacking pixels on this one not because I feel that Beyoncé requires another stan to join the overwhelming chorus of approval for her righteously vulgar treatise on the new New Black but because I want instead to draw light to the fissures exposed in the black community by such a release and how they represent a continuum of Blackness that no individual black person can own.
If we go back to my earlier model, what you’ll find is that most Black people inhabit the second and third tier of Blackness. The first circle is reserved for ankh-rocking, wooden beads jangling, Pharaoh profile picin’, Rastafarying HOTEPS. People for whom any degree of mainstream success equals treason. For whom mass media is a gigantic hypno-ray intended to brainwash unsuspecting bantus into submission. For these folks, there can be no nuance beyond “white deviltry” and “black righteousness.” Beyoncé is damned because Beyoncé’s hair is not consistently nappy. Beyoncé is damned because her lyrics aren’t extended Kweli-esque theses on the oscillating wheel of Nubian wretchedness and glory. Beyoncé is damned because she gyrates her Ubangi hips with such lusty fervor it is low-key incompatible with black patriarchy. Beyoncé is damned, damned, damned. Worship, instead, is reserved for figures like Lauryn Hill, our modern Nina Simone, for being inscrutable to the media, for shattering spectacularly under the spotlight of criticism thus confirming the incompatibility of black authorship and white consumption, for releasing one dope seminal album back in the 90s. Or for “underground” artists with overtly political agendas and niche followings. You know who they are. Or don’t.
Outside the inner circle of Blackness are where the majority of us lie. We who like naps but have no issues with relaxers or weaves. We who have no issues playing capitalism, but purchase Oyin products because its black-owned. Inside this broad region of blackness, there’s Obama, whose day job is President of the US but moonlights as a motivational speaker and organizer for young black men. Those of in this circle are comfortable with our double-consciousness and not parsing for existential loop holes to confirm our authenticity.
Like this for instance.
The bizarre contortion asserted here is that Beyoncé, a black woman, is appropriating her culture on behalf of corporations (including her husband’s) for their primary benefit. She is essentially lending them a black face to mask their nefarious intentions to sell us things. Because she appears in commercials for beauty products and soft drinks, she is selling out the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The author doesn’t say how Beyoncé’s involvement does this or whether it would be preferable that Black artists be erased from mass media and excluded from the benefits of capitalism, but this is all unnecessary. Because no actual offense on Bey’s part is required for it to ring true. Bey is the straw woman on which to hang all the failures of black militancy and nationalism. Just keep invoking the boogie-men. “Co-option,” “Corporate profits,” “corporate blackface.” (In love with the co-co!) Hilariously, this is invoked on a social media site dedicated to the co-option of the author’s opinion for corporate profits. I’m actually more concerned with the implicit assumption Black people are any more suggestible than everyone else when it comes to being sold things by celebrities. No Beyoncé fan believes Bey will show up and fix anything in their lives except silence and boredom, so who are these “haters” really addressing? Methinks they really have issue with the larger black community because of our duality. For how easy it is to rock a Malcolm X t-shirt while wolfing down a plate of spare ribs. For how satisfying it feels to shout off your hangover at church after a wild night of turn-up. For why we want our clergy holy but bedazzled and stuntin’. Black folks have a way of not getting tripped up in the contradictions. Our existence is contradiction. We are American but we didn’t choose to be. We are minorities but our cultural influence is international. Too many of us are locked up, poor and jobless and yet our struggle inspires the world. We want the freedom to twerk and slut shame all in the same breath. We want to stomp to some Kirk Franklin then stomp on some gays.
White folks, to their credit, have mostly stayed out of this analysis and offer good reasons why. Good for them. This is, as many have pointed out, a truly Black moment. A moment for us to reflect and re-asses the fault lines of our fractious cultural geography. How deep is deep? How much is selling out? How “down” is down? We need to know these things in order to know ourselves as authentic black folk, to know our place in the world, to understand home. And we owe these cultural moments to mass media — there’s no way around that. There’s no other way to disseminate the information (you see what I almost did there). We are literally having this present conversation, critique and celebration at once, because of Beyoncé’s entrenchment with corporate wealth. It would not be relevant otherwise.
So, thank you Queen Bey, for blessing us once again with the gift of controversy and self-reflection while simultaneously providing women and queens everywhere with new dance material for the next three years. We are now having a long overdue conversation about colorism, class-ism, this New Black shit, and every Blackity Black thing inbetween.
That’s how you know you that bitch.