As you may have seen during this year’s Super Bowl performance, Beyoncé basically blew the crowd away while also making a social statement that resulted in public outrage. The #BlackLivesMatter movement has been prominent throughout the nation for the past few years. Beyoncé took a bold chance by putting on a half time performance with her backup dancers dressed as Black Panthers in order to advocate for the movement. The response that the public has had towards the performance has rendered both negative and positive opinions.

Beyoncé, dressed in all black, along with her black backup dancers, also dressed in all black, triggered an outburst of emotions throughout her predominantly-white American crowd. By dedicating her whole performance, which she was given the free stage to create, to African Americans, the natural response of the caucasian crowd watching her was that it was “racist,” promoting a message that many considered was perpetuating that black lives matter over other lives. The conservative media completely assumed that her whole performance was dedicated solely to the Black Panthers only because her dancers’ costumes paid tribute to the group.  The Black Panthers are considered by some as a domestic terrorist group, especially at the time of their popularity, which is the reason why so many thought her performance was preposterous.

On top of this, her performance was also called “an attack to police officers”, simply because she outwardly said “stop shooting us”. By “us”, she means black Americans who have inherently suffered through statistically disproportionate numbers of police brutality. Among these numbers are Mario Woods, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and a gut wrenching amount of others who have been beaten fatally or near to death. As a result of her performance, Miami police have decided to refuse to protect Beyoncé and offer her security on her upcoming Formation tour. And it doesn’t even end there. President of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, Javier Ortiz, declared that him and the rest of the Miami FOP don’t want to stop with Miami, and want Beyoncé to be unprotected for her entire tour.  Ortiz is even calling for “law enforcement labor organizations to join our boycott across the country and to boycott all of her concerts”. Nice.

Although a lot of negative opinions have arose about the performance, there has been a comforting amount of positive opinions that support Beyoncé’s bold choice that gives me/most an ounce of hope for humanity. According to Teen Vogue’s article regarding the ridiculousness that accompanied the outrage over Beyoncé’s performance, “Pro-black and black-centered messages are not automatically anti-white”. The article basically bashes and mocks the numerous negative opinions of others- mostly white- individuals. All of the “black” that appeared on stage, including the black outfits and the skin tone of Beyoncé and her backup dancers, resulted in the automatic outrage of white people. This is because black bodies are just naturally treated differently in America, also pointed out in the Teen Vogue article, which additionally stated “White people are happy when black folks are entertaining…but let them show an ounce of agency and it’s a problem”.

It is almost natural for an outrage to arise in a nation like America, as we are a country with the most diverse point of views. With a huge amount of conservatives watching the biggest football game of the season only to see a performance filled with support for not only the Black Lives Matter movement, but also LGBT rights, negative responses almost came instinctively. Yet, despite the difficult reactions, there have also been a surge of positive articles and commentaries that express support towards Beyoncé’s bold choice. To me, her decision to perform and advocate for her skin color (coincidentally during Black History Month) in the nation’s most viewed event is inspiring and it honestly takes a woman only as daring, fearless, and audacious as Beyoncé to uphold such a powerful position.