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| Photo: naturallymoi.com |
And yeah!
The worst thing anyone in any society can do is to be inconsiderate of the needs of others or to expect that everything will always be done only in the way one wants. This state of mind is brought to the fore by Beyonce's Superbowl half-time performance. What angered conservative Americans wasn't the fact that Beyonce paid an unbecoming homage to Black Panthers, Malcolm X and the 'Black Lives Matter' movement. What pissed off the right was the exposure the cause received and the manner Beyonce used her celebrity power to empower the powerless.
Superbowl isn't only watched by millions in America and around the world, it's also an American tradition. Giving the then fringe voices and organizations a voice in the middle of one of American's biggest yearly events is the main problem. But Beyonce has done her job.
History is easy to forget; and indeed there are things in history that we wished we could forget an move on with our lives. However, life is not that easy as reactions to Beyonce's salutation to African-American struggle shows.
The controversy Beyonce's performance generated rubber stamped the argument that America is nostalgic about the past everyone wants to forget: slavery and Jim Crow. Besides, Beyonce's performance also shows that America leaves intellectual war to a few and leaves the greater majority in an epistemic darkness or thirst. People understand little to nothing about organizations that are not given coverage in the mainstream media. And Beyonce has done well, though provocatively.
Malcolm X and the Black Panthers were products of immoral American consciousness and kids in America need to be educated about the causal realities which produced Malcolm X (early version) and the Black Panthers. X and the Panthers weren't products of their own mental creation. Like Beyonce's performance, their existence is a function of a system that's stuck in the past. A system that only highlights their bad and ignore their good.
There are European-Americans who appreciated (and still appreciate) Martin Luther King's philosophy of nonviolence; however, there are still European-Americans who believe that KKK was a law enforcement organization. To excuse the existence and atrocities of KKK is understandable given natural ethnocentral proclivities; however, to condemn an organization that came into existence given the atrocious treatment of people is a moral low for contemporary America.
It's acceptable to criticize Beyonce but the severity of the response is a message to African-Americans by European-Americans that we'll mistreat you but don't speak!
Just Shut UP? Bad message!
