“The disbelief in their eyes can be easily understood by what my family has endured until this point.” These are words, detailing the night of the 2008 presidential election, I wrote in my admission essay to Brown University. Despite being not even two generations removed from the horrors of slavery, my family, like many others, felt true pride and a belief in progress as the words “Barack Obama elected 44th president of the United States” scrolled across the television screen. I was four years old.
Just as the horse saddles that lined my grandpa’s garage or the cowboy boots I reserved for special occasions made me feel a sense of pride, this moment made me confident in the color of my skin and the work of my peers. I was proud to be a Black American, and, for better or worse, I was proud to be an American. So when Beyoncé’s Christmas Day halftime performance at the Houston Texans versus Baltimore Ravens game incited outrage over the use of American imagery, I was confused.
Discourse ensued across social media about the singer invoking blatant American imagery, likening it to propaganda. People criticized the larger-than-life American flags and cowboy memorabilia, but what I believe truly confounded people was that a Black woman was attempting to reclaim this imagery. To this I say, if a four-year-old could understand the joy of progress in this country, why can’t adults?
Beyoncé Knowles-Carter is a native of Houston, a hotspot for Black rodeo culture steeped in an immense history of racial injustice. “Whole lotta red in that white and blue/ History can’t be erased,” Beyonce sings on “YA YA,” a song from her hit album “Cowboy Carter.” It seems pretty obvious to me what the superstar was getting at: the sacrifices made by Black Americans to this country are forever intertwined with this country’s history and current state. Black Americans have spent the last three centuries pouring into this country; regardless of its sometimes involuntary nature, it would be ludicrous not to be proud of these additions.
From TikTok to Instagram to Twitter, Black Southerners made their case for why it is more than okay for them to be proud of their American identity. Growing up within a powerful microculture of Black cowboys, in a state where many fought for the Confederacy and still proudly wave the “Stars and Bars,” showed me that patriotism, like everything in this world, is not black and white.
Black Americans are entitled to patriotism. Whatever your opinions are on the current status of Black Americans in this country, one cannot deny history. And the history is this: America would not be what it is today without the contributions of Black Americans. Yes, I am proud to be the grandson of former sharecroppers and survivors of Jim Crow because, like me, they hoped for the country they called home to become better — and what is more patriotic than that? It would be foolish of me not to be proud of their and many other Black Americans’ contributions to progress us to a point where I could be writing this for you today.
I am proud to be an American, which does not mean I ignore its faults. It means I recognize those faults and work tirelessly to fix them. For anyone else condemning Beyoncé’s performance as propaganda, I implore you to look into the origin of the word “cowboy.”
Christian Davis ’27 can be reached at christian_davis @brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
