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Beyoncé faces backlash after wearing shirt with anti-Indigenous language
Beyoncé faces backlash after wearing shirt with anti-Indigenous language

The Guardian

time30-06-2025

  • Entertainment
  • The Guardian

Beyoncé faces backlash after wearing shirt with anti-Indigenous language

A T-shirt worn by Beyoncé during a Juneteenth performance on her Cowboy Carter tour has sparked a discussion over how Americans frame their history and caused a wave of criticism for the Houston-born superstar. The T-shirt worn during a concert in Paris featured images of the Buffalo Soldiers, who belonged to Black US army units active during the late 1800s and early 1900s. On the back was a lengthy description of the soldiers that included 'their antagonists were the enemies of peace, order and settlement: warring Indians, bandits, cattle thieves, murderous gunmen, bootleggers, trespassers, and Mexican revolutionaries.' Images of the shirt and videos of the performance are also featured on Beyoncé's website. As she prepared to return to the US for performances in her home town this weekend, fans and Indigenous influencers took to social media to criticize Beyoncé for wearing a shirt that frames Native Americans and Mexican revolutionaries as anything but the victims of American imperialism – and for promoting anti-Indigenous language. Several Native influencers, performers and academics took to social media this week to criticize Beyoncé or decry the shirt's language as anti-Indigenous. 'Do you think Beyoncé will apologize (or acknowledge) the shirt?' an Indigenous news and culture Instagram account with more than 130,000 followers, asked in a post on Thursday. Many of her critics, as well as fans, agree. A flood of social media posts called out the pop star for the historic framing on the shirt. 'We have to be honest about what they did, especially in their operations against Indigenous Americans and Mexicans,' said Chisom Okorafor, who posts on TikTok under the handle @confirmedsomaya. A spokesperson for Beyoncé did not respond to a request for comment. The Buffalo Soldiers served in six military units created after the US civil war in 1866. They were comprised of formerly enslaved men, freemen, and Black civil war soldiers and fought in hundreds of conflicts – including in the Spanish-American war as well as the first and second world wars – until their 1951 disbanding. As the quote on Beyoncé's shirt notes, they also fought numerous battles against Indigenous peoples as part of the US army's campaign of violence and land theft during the country's westward expansion. Some historians say the moniker 'Buffalo Soldiers' was bestowed by the tribes who admired the bravery and tenacity of the fighters – but that might be more legend than fact, said Cale Carter, the director of exhibitions at the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum in Houston. Carter and other museum staff said that, only in the past few years, the museum made broader efforts to include more of the complexities of the battles the Buffalo Soldiers fought against Native Americans and Mexican revolutionaries – and the role they played in the subjugation of Indigenous peoples. They, much like many other museums across the country, are hoping to add more nuance to the framing of American history and be more respectful of the ways they have caused harm to Indigenous communities amid political pressure on schools to avoid honest discussions about the US's past. Simultaneously, Beyoncé's recent album Act II: Cowboy Carter has played on a kind of American iconography, which many see as her way of subverting the country music genre's adjacency to whiteness and reclaiming the cowboy aesthetic for Black Americans. Last year, she became the first Black woman ever to top Billboard's country music chart, and Cowboy Carter won her the top prize at the 2025 Grammy awards, album of the year. But Tad Stoermer, a Johns Hopkins University professor and historian, also points out that the Buffalo Soldiers have been framed in the American story in a way that also plays into the myths of American nationalism. As Beyoncé's use of Buffalo Soldiers imagery implies, Black Americans also use their story to claim agency over their role in the creation of the country, said Alaina E Roberts, a historian, author and professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies the intersection of Black and Native American life from the civil war to present day. The problem, she said, is the Buffalo Soldiers 'were literally involved in not just the settlement of the [US] West but of genocide in a sense'. Okorafor said there is no 'progressive' way to reclaim the US's history of empire building in the west – and that Beyoncé's use of Western symbolism conveys the message that 'Black people, too, can engage in American nationalism.' 'It is a message that tells you to abandon immigrants, Indigenous people, and people who live outside … the United States,' she said. 'It is a message that tells you not only is it a virtue to have been born in this country – but the longer your line extends in this country, the more virtuous you are.'

Straw review – Taraji P Henson rises above Tyler Perry's tortured Netflix thriller
Straw review – Taraji P Henson rises above Tyler Perry's tortured Netflix thriller

The Guardian

time06-06-2025

  • Entertainment
  • The Guardian

Straw review – Taraji P Henson rises above Tyler Perry's tortured Netflix thriller

Tyler Perry is not beating the allegations. For decades, the content-creating studio chief has been roundly criticized for making the traumatization of Black women a persistent theme in his work. In Straw, his latest exercise in misogynoir for Netflix, he pulls out all the stops to break the camel's back. The guinea pig for this cultural stress test is Janiyah (Taraji P Henson), an apex Perry caricature who is past the point of exhaustion. Her loud, hot and dumpy apartment isn't all that keeps her in perennial discomfort. There's also a precocious young daughter (Gabrielle E Jackson) with nagging medical issues, and that eviction notice on the dining table. She can't make ends meet despite working three jobs, and her cashier's position at the local food desert grocery store is especially thankless. When an angry customer spikes a bottle of fizzy drink at Janiyah's feet, her boss orders her to stand down from her busy checkout lane to clean up the mess. When Janiyah unwittingly cuts off an undercover cop in traffic after begging off the register to run a quick errand, he throws his ice coffee drink at her car and threatens to 'find a legal way to blow your brains out'. In the end, Janiyah is ticketed for driving on an expired license, her car is impounded and she's forced to find her way back to work on foot in the kind of surprise monsoon that Perry keeps in the forecast to further break down his female protagonists – and, verily, things do indeed get worse: Her irascible boss (Glynn Turman) fires her for deserting her post, her landlord empties the meager contents of her dumpy apartment onto the curb, and her kid is confiscated from school after the principal squeals to child protective services. At her wit's end, she treks back to the grocery store to urge her boss to release her last paycheck only for the both of them to wind up held up at gunpoint when a band of robbers charge into the back office to empty the store vault. There's a glimmer of hope when one of the robbers attacks Janiyah, and she fights him off and kills him with his own gun – but her boss is convinced she's in on the heist because the attacker 'knew her'. Turns out the guy only read her name tag, but the boss is already running with his story while on the phone with 911. When he threatens to take her down and twists the knife, Janiyah finally snaps and shoots him dead, too. It isn't much long after that we find Janiyah in the middle of a hostage situation at the bank when her attempt to cash that bloody last paycheck raises alarm bells. The balance of the film plays like the Tyler Perry version of John Q, down to the Luigi Mangione-coded public rallying cry – trading injury for Spike Lee's insult, perhaps. The third act is freighted with pointed digressions on the intractable racism in banking and healthcare systems, and the inescapable Perry twist at the film's core is its own commentary on the Black mental health crisis. As ever, Perry – who takes top billing once more as this film's writer, director and executive producer – engages with many ideas, but none that he seems to fully understand. That includes Black women, whom he does a tremendous disservice to once again. But the hatchet job may be lost on most viewers because Straw is one of the better films on Perry's grade curve. The pacing could be better for what is ostensibly a 105-minute thriller. The day-night transitions in particular are wild, and again the rain comes out of nowhere. But Straw doesn't meander as much as Perry's other productions. (Looking at you, Duplicity.) It's not soapy or camp either. There's melodrama, sure, but Straw makes you take it seriously – and a lot of it is a credit to the actors playing it straight and, possibly, getting a few extra takes to refine their performances (weird flex, I know). Sherri Shepherd, who's typically at her best going for laughs, shines as the sober bank manager who remains empathetic in crisis. Teyana Taylor was equally impressive as the detective hostage negotiator who advocates for Janiyah. (The only letdown in her performance was her wig, which is very much on-brand for Perry.) But yet again it's Henson who delivers the powerhouse performance while edging from distress to anger to winsome compassion. It's just a shame that after hiring her for four films now, Perry is still treating her like a speed bag. In one of the scenes outside the bank, as the standoff at the bank deepens, a protest movement foments and one Janiyah supporter holds up a sign that reads, 'Nevertheless she persisted', a much-memed feminist slogan. Sadly, the irony is probably lost on Perry – ultimately, a billionaire servant of the evangelical Christian patriarchy who is steadfastly committed to proving that the women of the world who make 'bad' choices deserve all the pain and punishment they can get and then some. This certainly won't be the last Straw. Straw is out now on Netflix

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