Malcolm X’s daughter offers praise for Beyoncé’s Super Bowl performance

Ilyasah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, had nothing but nice things to say about Beyoncé and her performance at the Super Bowl 50 halftime show, and she expressed surprised that people would see that performance as somehow anti-police.

TheGrio Staff

Mar 2, 2016

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“All she said was stop shooting us,” Shabazz said on Monday during a Black History Month event in which she spoke with several Long Island teens. “She entertained us with a purpose.”

Shabazz went on to compare the Super Bowl performance to Lady Gaga’s recent Oscars tribute to rape survivors.

“Lady Gaga was standing up as a victim of rape — her performance was for all the survivors and to empower people,” Shabazz said. “There shouldn’t be an uproar because Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar say ‘Stop shooting us’.

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Shabazz also said that she did not notice the costumes worn by Beyoncé and her dancers during the Super Bowl performance. The costumes were meant to be a tribute to the Black Panthers movement.

Instead, Shabazz said, she was struck by the beauty of the dancers themselves as well as their unabashedly natural looks. “I noticed the background dancers were all African American wearing their hair naturally and I thought that was very beautiful,” she said.