Upon reading Haralambos Kasapidis’ article about Beyonce’s visual album, Lemonade, I was left unsatisfied. The article was surface level, liberal, and with the exception of once or twice mentioning Beyonce being a black woman, deracialized.

Yes, surface level, Beyonce talks about infidelity. But to focus so much on whether or not her husband cheated when there are tons of other more important issues addressed in this album is a manifestation of patriarchy.

This album is not for “people everywhere”, or all women, as Kasapidis stated. It is for black women, an ode to our strength and power despite living in a white supremacist, capitalist world. Bey takes us on a journey from pain, to revival, from isolation to community with black women. She got extremely political, shed light on the varying aspects of our culture, and was also (unintentionally or not), a bit exclusionary to certain black woman identities.

In this album, Bey got more political. She displayed more dark skin black girls and women. She talked about how her father taught her how to ‘shoot’ (which in the South is important for protection against white mobs who would take black-owned land).

She used Michaela DePrince, a Sierra Leonean-American ballet dancer as a prima ballerina. This is politically meaningful because such a status is disproportionately reserved for blonde-haired, blue eyed ballerinas, which are indicative of our society’s beauty standards- prima ballerinas represent the most beautiful ballerina both in talent and physical beauty.

Even if you really want to focus on the infidelity Beyonce speaks about, the constant switching from the late 19th century to the early 20th century in regard to said infidelity suggests a generational burden of infidelity that black women deal with.

The ways in which Beyonce addresses black culture is both political and varying. Her entire album was dedicated to Southern black culture. All of the different hairstyles worn in this album is indicative of the beautiful and complex culture we have surrounding our hair. Visually, she shed light on black women’s relationship to spirituality, nature, and other black women. She showcased the ritual body art of the Ori which is political because it suggests transnational black solidarity; and the clothing worn in the 20th century is also cultural.

With all of the deep and complex aspects of Beyonce’s Visual Album there are some valid critiques that should be addressed as nothing is perfect, but we must work on bettering ourselves as much as possible. Although Beyoncé showed black queer love near the end of her album ( which is a challenge to the status quo and by extension white supremacy), there was a lack of black trans bodies. Including Amandla Stenberg in her album I assume was political both because of her politics and because she is gender non-conforming, but this inclusion does not satisfy all identity inclusion. Also, there was a major lack of fat Black women in this album. Many black women have to deal with fatphobia because it is rooted in anti blackness (it is highly geared toward dark skin black femmes). And lastly, although moving, she only showed cameos of the mothers and relatives of murdered black boys and men. There were no family members shown of the numerous amounts of black women, girls, cis or trans, bodies that get brutalized and murdered on a daily basis.

I did not even touch on all of the issues Beyonce’s complex album shed light on, so Kasapidis’ review of the album was problematic, and proves that when people post articles about blackness, they should at least be conversing with black people.

Epiphany Munoz is a junior majoring in Human Development.