“The Day Beyoncé Turned Black”: Comedy and Truth
“The Day Beyoncé Turned Black” is an SNL skit that is not only hilarious, but brings contemporary issues to light. The skit provides important commentary on white people’s reactions to Beyoncé’s Lemonade album. In the skit, white people see the news and find out that Beyoncé’s new song, “Formation”, is “unapologetically black.” White people start to panic when they find out Beyoncé is black and realize the new song is not for them. Then the streets turn to chaos and a white woman asks if Beyoncé was black in “Single Ladies” too.
This skit shows that white people are okay with Beyoncé being black until she is too black. As a white person, I want to consider how we claim to love black celebrities, but ignore issues black people face that have been caused by our race. Why do we take black culture like music and style, but then turn around and criticize black people for celebrating their own culture? If we want to be like Beyoncé and learn her past lyrics, then why are we suddenly offended by Beyoncé expressing her identity in “Formation?”
These questions relate to an essay we read in class called “The Weight” by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah that is in the book The Fire This Time edited by Jesmyn Ward. Ghansah writes about her experience visiting James Baldwin’s home in France. She recalls feeling conflicted about Baldwin because “many men who only cared about Ali, Coltrane, and Obama praised him as the black authorial exception” (Ghansah 21). This quote speaks to the way that successful black people are recognized in society. Some black artists are able to break barriers and be idolized by everyone.
Ghansah said there was something different about Baldwin because of “the lofty, precious way in which he appeared in an essay by Joan Didion as the bored, above-it-all figure that white people revered because he could stay collected while the streets boiled” (Ghansah 21). Some black artists are seen as so exceptional that they transcend their blackness. White people admired Baldwin because they saw him as a famous author. This idea also connects to how we see Beyoncé because people are comfortable with her past music, but not her blackness. In “The Day Beyoncé Turned Black,” white people find out that there are also other celebrities who are black like Kerry Washington. One white person says “no it can’t be! She’s on ABC!”
This skit also showed how white people were shocked by the political stance Beyoncé took. Some white people voiced their anger for what they saw in Beyoncé’s “Formation” video as anti-police. One of the most notably outspoken public figures was Rudy Giuliani. On Fox News he said that the “Formation” Superbowl performance “was really outrageous that she used it as a platform to attack police officers who are the people who protect her and protect us, and keep us alive” (Chokshi par. 3). In reality, Beyoncé is not promoting people to hate the police. She is promoting a change to police brutality so that innocent black people are not shot.
The backlash that Beyoncé faced for “Formation” connects to the essay “White Rage” by Carol Anderson in The Fire This Time. According to Anderson, white rage is when white people respond to African American advancement with anger or fear. I would argue that white people’s outrage to Beyoncé was “white rage” because they were mad at her calling to action for black people’s rights.
Overall, this skit made me think about the ways white people view Beyoncé. Beyoncé is an icon, but she is also a real person. She is a black person and a black woman. Beyoncé beautifully illustrates her relationship to her identity and past in Lemonade. Some white people were surprised by Beyoncé’s use of music as activism. White people should be able to support Beyoncé, but also support Beyoncé when she says Black Lives Matter.
