A shirt brought by Beyoncé During a performance of his “Cowboy Carter” tour, he has provoked a discussion on how Americans frame their story and have caused a wave of criticism at Houston’s superstar.
The t-shirt carried during a concert in Paris presented images of the soldiers of Buffalo, who belonged to the active US military units during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. At the back there was a long description of the soldiers, which included “ their antagonists were the enemies of peace, order and settlement: Indians at war, bandits, thieves, booms of gun, gunpowters, bands, bands, bands, bands, thieves, thieves, bands. Bootleggers, infractions and Mexican revolutionaries. “
The images of the shirt and the videos of the representation also appear on the website of Beyoncé.
While preparing to return to the United States for performances in his hometown this weekend, indigenous influential fans and influentials led to social media to criticize Beyoncé for a t-shirt that frames Native Americans and Mexican revolutionaries like anything that victims of American imperialism and to promote anti-Indian language.
A spokesman for Beyoncé did not respond to a comment request.
Who were the Búfalo soldiers?
Buffalo soldiers served in six military units created after the Civil War in 1866. They were made up of formerly enslaved men, Fremen and Black Civil War soldiers, and fought in hundreds of conflicts, included in the Spanish-American War, World War II and World War II, which dissolved in 1951.
As an appointment on Beyoncé’s shirt notes, they also fought numerous battles against indigenous peoples as part of the United States Army violence and theft campaign during the western western expansion.
Some historians say that the moniker “soldiers buffalo” was granted by the tribes who admired the courage and tenacity of the fighters, but this could be more legend than the fact. “At the end of the day, we really do not have this type of information,” said Cale Carter, exhibition director of the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum in Houston.
Carter and other museum staff said that in recent years the museum has made wider efforts to include more than the complexities of the battles that Buffalo soldiers fought against the Native Americans and the Mexican revolutionaries and the role they played in the subjugation of indigenous peoples. They, like many other museums in the country, hope to add more nuances to the frame of North -American History and to be more respectful of the ways they have caused damage to indigenous communities.
“We romanticize the western border,” he said. “The first stories that talked about Buffalo soldiers were affected by many of these factors. So you really don’t see a change in this narrative until recently.”
Often there has been a lack of various voices that discuss the story of Buffalo soldiers, said Michelle Tovar, the director of the Museum’s education. He said that the current political climate has made enormous pressure in schools, including those of Texas, to avoid honest debates on North -American history.
“Right now, in this area, we are receiving a boost from many school districts where we cannot go to teach this story,” Tovar said. “We are a museum where we can at least be a center, where we can invite the community regardless of what the districts say, invite them to learn them and do what we can do the dissemination to continue teaching honest history.”
Historians examine the reason for claim
Beyoncé’s recent album “Act II: Cowboy Carter” has played in a kind of North -American iconography, which many see as their way of subverting the adjacence of the country of country music in the whiteness and Claiming cowboy aesthetics for north -Americans. Last year, she became the first black woman to Top Billboard’s Country Music Chart, and “Cowboy Carter” won the highest award for the Grammy 2025 Awards, Album of the year.
“Buffalo’s soldiers play this important role in the black property of the American West,” said Tad Stomer, historian and professor at Johns Hopkins University. “In my opinion, (Beyoncé is) well aware of the role of these images. This is the” Cowboy Carter “tour of Crying Out Loud. The whole tour, the whole album, the whole piece is located in this layer narrative.”
But Stomer also points out that Búfalo soldiers have been framed in North -American history in a way that also interprets the myths of American nationalism.
As the use of Beyoncé de Buffalo Soldiers Imagaria implies, the North -Black Americans also use their history to claim the agency on their role in creating the country, said Alaina E. Roberts, a historian, author and professor at the University of Pittsburgh, who studies the intersection of North -American black and native life from the Civil War to the present.
“This is the category in which he thought he may have entered this conversation, but Buffalo’s soldiers are even a step above, because they were literally involved not only in the Western settlement, but also in genocide in a sense,” he said.
Backlash online is built in front of Houston programs
Several influencers, native performers, and academics brought on social media this week to criticize Beyoncé or decipher the t -shirt language as an anti -industry. “Do you think Beyoncé will apologize (or will recognize) the shirt?” Indigenous.TV, an indigenous news and indigenous culture instagram account with more than 130,000 followers, asked in a post on Thursday.
Many of its critics, as well as fans, agree. A flood of social media publications called the pop star for the historical shirt frame.
“Buffalo’s soldiers are an interesting historical moment to look. But we must be honest about what they did, especially in their operations against North -American and Mexican indigenous,” said Chisom Okorafor, who publishes Tiktok under the @confirmedsomaya handle.
Okorafor said that there is no “progressive” way of claiming the history of the West of America in the west, and that the use of Beyoncé western symbolism sends a problematic message: “that blacks can also participate in American nationalism.”
“Blacks can also benefit from the atrocities of the American Empire,” he said. “It is a message that tells you that you leave immigrants, natives and people living outside the United States. It is a message that tells you not only a Virtue Born in this country, but also extends your line in this country, more virtuous you are.”
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