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| Photo: Instagram Beyoncé. |
Once again Beyoncé finds herself at the centre of an identarian war. She has been accused of cultural appropriation in the past, when she recorded country songs, a rather ridiculous affair and also when she dressed up as Nefertiti, the Egyptian queen and apparent goddess. I have dealt previously with the country western music issue and how ridiculous it is to say only white people can sing country and its corollary, that only black people can sing certain types of music.[1] I have also dealt with the issue of Nefertiti and cultural appropriation.[2] They were all ridiculous reactionary discussions.
This one is different, but equally reactionary and this time she is clearly on the wrong side. She has done what all identitarians eventually do, celebrate “her” people over and above everyone else, regardless of what they did. Her crime this time is she wore a T-shirt that referred to the Buffalo Soldiers. Probably shouldn’t have been that difficult, but she managed to make a complete racist mess of it all. Bob Marley sang about the Buffalo Soldiers without any great controversy. But Beyoncé’s shirt worn as part of her Cowboy Carter tour for the Juneteenth (end of slavery) celebrations said of the Buffalo Soldiers that:
their antagonists were the enemies of peace, order and settlement: warring Indians, bandits, cattle thieves, murderous gunmen, bootleggers, trespassers, and Mexican revolutionaries.[3]
The language is clearly modern: enemies of peace, order and settlement sounds like a line borrowed from the War on Terror or Israeli genocide against Palestinians. It does not sound like a common phrase from the period, though it is not that far removed from General Sherman’s letter to Ulysses S. Grant when the Buffalo Soldiers were being setup in which he stated “We are not going to let a few thieving, ragged Indians check and stop the progress [of the railroads]”.[4] . Beyoncé’s enemies of peace were the indigenous population that was being displaced and also those later involved in one of the great revolutions of Latin America, Mexicans who are also now being hounded by ICE agents, as are other Latin Americans. The deeply reactionary character of her T-shirt cannot be overstated, both in modern terms and also in looking back on US history.
The Buffalo Soldiers were all-black regiments, initially commanded by white officers, set up following the Civil War. Their initial role was to push westward in the expansion of the US and the conquest of indigenous lands. This was hardly a progressive role, they were at the end of the day taking part in the genocide of the native American population. It is not something to be celebrated. They further took part in US imperialist wars in Cuba, Puerto Rico and also the invasion of the Philippines and suppression of revolt there.
Remembering the past is always complicated and looked at through modern eyes. Bob Marley’s song reminds us that they were stolen from Africa and fought for America without going into much detail.
I'm just a Buffalo Soldier
In the heart of America
Stolen from Africa, brought to America
Said he was fighting on arrival
Fighting for survival
Said he was a Buffalo Soldier
Win the war for America.
He limited himself to some facts that they had fought for the US. That was the 1970s but times have changed and we are all more aware of the subtleties of history. Marley, unlike Beyoncé did not describe indigenous people and Mexicans as enemies of peace, order and settlement. Blacks were not the only ones to do this. Many thousands of Irish also took part in the US military campaigns against the native Americans. Of course, they are not the only historical figures who perhaps shouldn’t be celebrated. In Ireland we also have the case of John Mitchel, an Irish revolutionary whose Jail Journal is still read and periodically reprinted. However, when Mitchel went to the US he not only fought on the side of the Confederacy, but advocated slavery and also the resumption of the Atlantic slave trade. Hardly a progressive cause, and it besmirches his role in the fight for Irish freedom, making any celebration of him highly problematic. In fact, despite having been a hugely influential figure in Ireland, Europe and the USA before the Civil War, the 200th anniversary of his birth went almost unremarked in Ireland, in contrast to the 150th.[5] Not everything and everyone in our past is worthy of celebration.
The Buffalo Soldiers were regiments set up in 1867 two years after the Civil War, they were not the black regiments that had fought in that war. To fight against slavery was progressive, but the new regiments set up after the war had an entirely, unequivocally reactionary role, just like Mitchel’s role in the Civil War was entirely and unequivocally reactionary. There was no noble cause and yes, the black soldiers, like the Irish who participated in the Indian Wars, were economic recruits. That doesn’t make it right, they were in service to big capital, just like all the US soldiers, black, white, Hispanic that later fought in Vietnam and Iraq etc., and are no more deserving of our praise or celebration.
These men utilized the state’s latest technologies of mass killing developed during the Civil War and its mercenary soldiers (including the former slaves known as “buffalo soldiers”) to wage their war because they were in a hurry to shovel subsidies to the railroad corporations and other related business enterprises. Many of them profited handsomely, as the Credit Mobilier scandal revealed. The railroad corporations were the Microsofts and IBMs of their day, and the doctrines of neomercantilism defined the Republican Party’s reason for existing. The Republican Party was, after all, the “Party of Lincoln,” the great railroad lawyer and a lobbyist for the Illinois Central and other midwestern railroads during his day.[6]
In order to do that, the native American population was dehumanised as were the Mexicans. Sherman believed that the people of New Mexico where there was a mixture of native Americans, Mexicans and blacks to be a mongrel people and he was determined to prevent that happening elsewhere during the Indian wars and openly spoke about extermination, or what we would nowadays call genocide.[7] All Beyoncé did was repeat and endorse the racist comments of US generals in their wars of conquest and extermination.
Their deployment overseas is also a case in point. Rich reactionaries like Beyoncé might like to celebrate them now, but at the time their role was controversial and divided the black population of the US. Whilst some black newspapers supported the war, others took issue with it. One such piece stated:
Great excitement prevails here among all classes, and some of our colored men seem enthusiastic over the idea of enlisting in defense of the government, while some are more reserved and common-sensed, asserting that no colored man should never again offer his services to protect a government that does not protect him. The government of the United States will allow some of her most loyal and true citizens to be burned and butchered and shot to pieces like dogs, without protection, and go right on ignoring their rights and claims as if all were peace and happiness in the family; and yet, when a foreign war is threatened, these same ill-treated citizens are wont to be rushed to the front in the name of protecting the nation’s honor. Such injustice is not tolerated by any other civilized nation; not even is Spain guilty of such discrimination among her own citizens. As a race what means have we for unjust discrimination? Colored men...let us think before acting. If the government wants our support and services, let us demand and get a guarantee for our safety and protection at home. We want to put a stop to Lynch law, the butchering of our people like hogs, burning our houses, shooting our wives and children and raping our daughters and mothers. In short, as a race, we want indemnity for the loss of ten thousand Negroes who have been lynched and butchered and slaughtered since the civil war. When we are guaranteed freedom and equality before the law, as other American citizens, then we will have a right, as such, to take up arms in defense of our country.[8]
It is not as sharp or as political as Muhammad Ali’s statement about why he wouldn’t go to Vietnam to fight a white man’s war against people who had done him no harm on behalf of people who had. But it comes close. And though Ali’s stance is within living memory, there are nowadays more than a few blacks and whites who lionise the participation of black soldiers in Vietnam (Colin Powell and Barack Obama to name just two).
Likewise, in their role as colonial soldiers in the Philippines, the resistance to the occupation:
…addressed leaflets and posters to “The Colored American Soldier,” designed to remind black soldiers of the discrimination and violence they suffered back home. The propaganda warned the soldiers they were being used as tools in the hands of their white masters to further the latter’s ambitions to oppress other people of color.[9]
As for Mexico, the US Army’s role was in intervention in the Mexican revolution that seriously undermined and weakened the role of Pancho Villa. Now we come full circle with Beyoncé justifying oppression. Whatever historical appreciation is to be made of the Buffalo Soldiers it is not one of unbridled celebration and denigration of the victims of US Imperialism. Of course, the issues raised are not historic, but current. Fighting on the side of imperialism is always wrong, denigrating the resistance is equally heinous at all times. Beyoncé had a whole host of black historical personalities and movements to choose from, such as Frederick Douglass, who renounced his position as US Ambassador to Haiti following a US attempt to set up a naval base there. Or perhaps later figures such as W.E.B Debois, Rosa Parks, the fact she chose the Buffalo Soldiers and that caption is not accidental. She could have chosen the Black Panthers, but the problem is they stood in opposition to the regime in Washington. She, like many identitarians from all races and ethnic groups, declared her loyalty to US imperialism.
Just like in the Indian Wars and the Phillipines, young black soldiers died in Iraq and Afghanistan and even in Africa itself because the black bourgeoisie, in this case Beyoncé, tells them they have common cause with capitalism and US imperialism and that they should be proud to die for it, fighting the enemies of peace. Though, she won’t be doing any of the dying, not with that bank balance.
References
[1] Ó Loingsigh, G. (20/02/2025) Beyoncé, Irish Dancing and the Nonsense of Cultural Appropriation.
[2] Ó Loingsigh, G. (12/06/2020) Cultural Appropriation: A Reactionary Debate.
[3] The Guardian (29/06/2025) Beyoncé faces backlash after wearing shirt with anti-Indigenous language.
[4] DiLorenzo, T.J (2010) The Culture of Violence in the American West: Myth versus Reality. The Independent Review.
[5] Russell, A. (2015) John Mitchel -flawed hero. History Ireland. https://historyireland.com/john-mitchel-flawed-hero/
[6] Ibíd.
[7] DiLorenzo, T.J (2010) Op. Cit.
[8] Charles River Editors (2019) Buffalo Soldiers: The History and Legacy of the Black Soldiers Who Fought in the U.S. Army during the Indian Wars. para. 1.186
[9] Ibíd.
⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.
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