Beyoncé is a fabulous artist, and she tends to try to make wise decisions with how she handles her albums, tour, and sponsorships are appropriately received. For instance, her Cowboy Country album was an attempt to break through into country music, a genre historically not always welcoming to non-whites.
This, of course, is changing quite a bit. Beyoncé has a good level of popularity with country fans, but so do artists like Shaboozey and Kane Brown. The hope is that Queen Bey will help open doors for even more Black country musicians.
But at a recent concert on Juneteenth for her Cowboy Carter tour, which took place in Paris, France, the performer wore a T-shirt that featured the images of Buffalo soldiers. The issue gets complex with these soldiers as they were breaking into an army that was still predominantly white. The Buffalo soldiers were made up mostly of formerly enslaved men, freemen, and Black Civil War soldiers.
Beyoncé's well-intentioned T-shirt idea goes awry
They could rightfully be viewed as heroes for this, but it's not that simple, especially when it comes to the shirt Beyoncé was wearing. As part of the wording on the shirt was, "their antagonists were the enemies of peace, order, and settlement: warring Indians, bandits, cattle thieves, murderous gunmen, bootleggers, trespassers, and Mexican revolutionaries."
It's the "warring Indians" and "Mexican revolutionaries" that stand out most. Buffalo soldiers were tasked with facing Native American tribes only because of Western expansion and driving the Native Americans off their land. It was imperialism at its worst.
The same holds for so-called Mexican revolutionaries. US expansion meant taking land from Mexico, so these people likely had a right to try to defend their land.
Buffalo soldiers are historically important and ground-breaking, but what they were asked to do was, at times, terrible. They had to follow orders, sure, but Beyoncé should have had greater awareness of what the shirt said, especially as her approach has seemingly been one about inclusion.
Was the idea of Buffalo soldiers a positive thing? Yes, but like any soldiers, they were forced to do horrific things. The real issue was with the people giving the orders. It's simply poor taste to have a shirt that includes a group of soldiers fighting with two groups who were simply trying to survive, however.