Jessamyn Leeks

Liberal Studies, Science Concentration

Beyoncé’s Super Bowl halftime performance created a great deal of controversy over the past few months. There have been protests and boycotts as a response to the show in cities such as Miami and New York. It has been called “reverse-racist”, “anti-police”, and a “race-baiting stunt”. These reactions should not have been evoked from the singer’s performance.

An anti-Beyoncé rally was held in New York by a group called Proud of the Blues. The rally was held in order to “tell the NFL we don’t want hate speech & racism at the Superbowl ever again,” due to the singer’s allegedly racist performance. The protesters failed to mention their stance on the Washington Redskin’s team name and logo in their call to arms. The post included claims that the singer’s performance was anti-police, which is perhaps the most prevalent argument regarding this issue.

People claim that the performance was anti-police due to the dancer’s outfits resembling those of the Black Panther Party. This claim is made due to the fact that in 1973 a Black Panther Party member murdered a police officer. This fact is not to be overlooked or made light of in the slightest. It was a horrific incident which should not be commended. It is also not reflective of the party as a whole, as it breaks several of the rules the party held sacred. The Black Panther party was pro-black, which is a term that much of the population misinterprets to mean anti-white. They provided free breakfast programs to thousands of school children and opened over a dozen health care clinics. They were a group of at least 10,000, though many believe there to be substantially more, that had an ultimate goal very similar to that of the Black Lives Matter movement: equality.
Many people were upset over Beyoncé’s halftime performance, but the message we should have taken from it is another very important similarity between the Black Panther Party and the Black Lives Matter movement. In the Black Panther Party’s ten point program, they called for an “immediate end to police brutality and the murder of black people.” The Black Lives Matter movement frequently emphasizes the importance of each case in America where an unarmed black individual is shot and killed unjustly by a white police officer. While one member of the Black Panther Party went against what their party believed and murdered a police officer, it is not reflective of the party as a whole. While there are white police officers who unjustly murdered black children, it is not reflective of all white police officers or white people as a whole. Beyoncé’s performance was not anti-police, nor was it anti-white, it was pro-black and pro-equality.