SNL’s “The Day Beyoncé Turned Black” and How White America Went Nuts
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By Angela Bronner Helm, theRoot.com
…there’s always been some speculation and lots of room for interpretation when it came to Beyoncé’s, um, ethnicity.
Beyonce with backup dancers dressed as Black Panthers during the Super Bowl halftime show.
…between the blonde wigs, Creole propers and that L’Oreal ad where she self-identified as part French, Native American and black, well, one could comfortably assume that Queen Bey was just a shade black. Black-ish, even.
But all that changed the day before the Super Bowl when Yoncé dropped “Formation,” a brazen and unapologetic ode to Southern, African-American blackness and the militant love of such. The next day when she performed at the Super Bowl with her nod to the Black Panther Party and dropped the mic, Black America collectively lost its mind.
As “Formation”’s lyrics noted, “You know you that b–ch when you cause all this conversation”—there was no shortage of think pieces, critical analysis, and even criticism of the song and video…
Inevitably, there was some backlash when some people got wind of the fact that it wasn’t about them; that, and the Black Panther thing. There’s even a protest of sorts planned (and a counter protest), and silly articles and backlash against those.
Jumping right into the mix, last night Saturday Night Live inserted itself into the cultural conversation with the hilarious video, “The Day Beyoncé Turned Black,” a dark, apocalyptic movie trailer that shows what happens when white America finds out that Beyonce is, gasp, black. Watch:
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