Written by Sydney Bullock
The Super Bowl 50 has to go down as one of the most talked about halftime shows ever. Coldplay performed Viva La Vida to start off the show and Bruno Mars caught the audience’s attention after a couple of songs. But everyone’s jaw dropped when Beyoncé took stage, not only was she performing her new single ‘Formation’, but her back up dancers and she were dressed in Black Panther uniform. Her bold uniform made African Americans like myself, shocked but proud. This was the first time a halftime performer for the Super Bowl made a political statement and this statement was not ignored. In fact, it sparked conversation for weeks to come. And not all conversations were positive, because many were offended.
People were offended because of the lyrics of Formation, of how proud Beyoncé was of her blackness, and especially of how she was dressed at the halftime show. The dancers were dressed like Black Panther: black leather jacket, black berets and had Afros to match. Beyoncé’s outfit resembled more of Michael Jackson’s attire in Super Bowl 27 but many had jumped to conclusion that she looked like a Black Panther.
And to many, her song, performance and outfit, read anti-police. In a press statement release, Javier Ortiz, president of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, called for a boycott of Beyoncé’s April 26th concert in Miami, Florida. He said her Super Bowl performance was used to “divide Americans by promoting the Black Panthers and her antipolice message.”
Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. voiced his opinion on her performance to Fox Business stating: “[Beyonce] coming out…in those Black Panther type uniforms, would that be acceptable if a white band came out in hoods and white sheets in the same sort of fashion? We would be appalled and outraged.”
Yes, we would be appalled and outraged at a performer wearing KKK robes to perform. But to compare the Black Panthers to the KKK is outrageous. The Ku Klux Klan is a hate group that expressed their disdain for other races/religions unlike themselves by committing disgusting crimes against them. Although members of the Black Panther Party did kill police officers, they were killed because Black Panther members felt threatened. The KKK only accepted members that were white and non-Jewish. The Black Panther party accepted people of all races. The only disdain they held was towards police came from police brutality – that is what they sought to end with their Ten-Point Program. The Black Panthers were not anti-police they were anti-police brutality and that is parallel with the Black Lives Matter movement today.
To presume that the Black Panthers were a violent hate group would be an ignorant statement.
Beyoncé’s halftime show performance was not an attack on police officers; neither was her song and music video ‘Formation’. In Formation Beyoncé sang of her roots and how proud she is to be a black woman. The visuals in the music video show the ranges of African Americans from stereotypically ‘hood’ to ‘classy’ demonstrating how different black people can be. A young black child holding his hands up and the police mirroring him show a sort of peace between the two opposing groups. Written on a wall in the video was the saying ‘Stop Shooting Us’ chanted in many protests seeking justice for the victims of police brutality. In her Super Bowl performance, she did perform Formation with her back up dancers in strikingly resembled Black Panther uniform, not as black militants fighting and hating police, but as someone who wants to seek justice for her people that have been treated so wrongly in the past.
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