Cast aside your arguments: Beyoncé is the biggest celebrity of our time. 

Who else could release a song and have it be so popular that it’s performed the very next day at the Super Bowl with the entire crowd knowing the words? 

Who else could create a generation of Red Lobster aficionados, causing a 33% spike in sales? 

Who else could prompt an entire generation of women to accept and own the term “FLAWLESS,” even when society tries to insist otherwise?

Beyoncé has mainly built her mega-fame by appealing to everyone. She’s Pepsi, she’s L’Oréal, she’s a documentarian on HBO, she’s the cover of Vogue — she is for the people. 

She did the Super Bowl twice. And the public loves her…when she’s being safe. So what did Beyoncé do in this Super Bowl performance that has some white Americans in a tizzy?

Well first, Beyoncé, dressed in all black, marched onto the field with bullets strapped to her chest. Her first words? “Okay ladies, now let’s get in formation / Prove to me you got some coordination / You just might be a black Bill Gates in the making.” The military drum cadence behind her blasts in as her all-black backup dancers with their black berets and black Afros put their fists up, while fire rains behind them and Beyoncé smirks at the camera. All around the world, there was a collective, “Oh, my God.”

We saw her all-black squad move into an arrow formation pointing at Beyoncé as literally the center of this performance in the center of the biggest sporting event of the year. We heard her say she likes her “Negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils,” and reveal her penchant for natural hair. National television — and national sports, on that level — has never been more centered on black women. I’m sure this was a new experience for lots of people.

But before we even begin to entertain the collective screams of the all-white uproar, a point begs to be made: Pro-black and black-centered messages are not automatically anti-white.

The educator Paulo Freire warned us that, for those in power, any adjustment in the name of justice feels like oppression. By nature of being white, you don’t have to think about yourself. You just are.

But on the flipside, black people constantly think about the impact our presence will have on our interactions. We walk into stores and worry about reaching into our purse to get our phones — just in case someone thinks we’re stealing. We have to be overly polite in order to not come across as “sassy.” We have to worry, as Sandra Bland did, when we get pulled over by the police. Black bodies are simply treated differently in America.

By this virtue, when Beyoncé chooses to let her Super Bowl performance, bound to be seen ‘round the world, be one centered on unapologetic blackness, it’s dangerous. So far with “Formation,” Beyoncé has centered black women, asked cops to stop killing us, and encouraged black economic empowerment. She even sonically communicates how she wants to, trading in her superhuman vocal range for a lazy trap flow, refusing to code switch. Her entire performance was dedicated to blackness — not, as the conservative media would have it, solely the Black Panthers, to whom her dancers’ costumes paid tribute.

But the white tears still flow. Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City and godfather of the inherently racist Stop and Frisk act, said that Beyoncé’s Super Bowl halftime performance was “an attack on police officers.” He then, in a remarkable show of lacking self-awareness or ability to read the room, described police as “the people who protect her and protect us and keep us alive.” Rudy doesn’t realize that in America, many black people don’t consider themselves part of that “us.” And in the face of numbers proving the statistically disproportionate way in which police kill black Americans, his comments sound tone deaf.

And in a lot of ways, football was the perfect stage for this “conversation.” Because the reason some white folks are uncomfortable with this song is the same reason they call Cam Newton “disrespectful.” And why, when Marshawn Lynch stopped bowing down to white sports journalists and just played his game, collective panic ensued. And why white people demanded that Mizzou football players stay in their lane and play the game when the athletes refused to play until Tim Wolfe resigned. White people are happy when black folks are entertaining…but let them show an ounce of agency and it’s a problem.

So let’s take a look at these allegedly dangerous lyrics which “attack cops,” and are inappropriate for audiences across America. I’ll translate:

Y’all haters corny with that illuminati mess

Paparazzi, catch my fly, and my cocky fresh

Hi, I’m Beyoncé, a successful multimillionaire and I did this on my own. You may look upon my dopeness.

My daddy Alabama, Mama Louisiana

You mix that Negro with that Creole make a Texas Bamma

Hi, Beyoncé here again, still Black. And Southern.

I like my baby hair with baby hair and afros

I like my Negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils

Unapologetically and beautifully black. And remember when y’all tried to say Blue Ivy’s hair is unkempt? I like it this way. It’s gonna stay this way. And my black features gonna stay poppin’, too.

Earned all this money but they never take the country out me

I got hot sauce in my bag, swag.

STILL BLACK, AND STILL LOVING IT.

I dream it, I work hard, I grind ‘till I own it

I go hard. Get what’s mine. Take what’s mine.

With the song ending like that, it’s hard to understand why people are mad. This is basically an oratorical history of the United States of America. Black people went from literally not being considered human to being the first family of the United States. No matter what you throw at us, we advance. You might as well get on board and get in formation.

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