On February 6, 2016, Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter released the song, “Formation.” Since then, the Black community has constantly debated one line in that song: “You mix that Negro with that Creole.”
I’ve seen many a discussions surrounding the “divisiveness” of Beyoncé’s statement. To them, Creole and Negro are both Black, and her separating the two is part of her light-skinned agenda to divide Black people and to other herself. A valid statement, but in the talks of does Creole count as Blackness, or is it an exoticized version of Blackness, one voice is missing from the discussion: a Southern Black one.
The South is not a monolith.
I am from central rural Mississippi. As such, I identify as a Black Southern woman. When I hear Beyonce say, “My daddy Alabama, momma Louisiana/You mix that negro with that Creole make a Texas bamma,” I think about place. I think about the defining cultures of those places. For me, Beyoncé compared Black Alabamian culture to the larger Southern negro culture and Louisianian culture to Creole culture. I don’t think this is a mistake or that it’s problematic to do so.
A quick Google search shows you that Louisiana Creole was a term coined in the 1700s to refer to people in one of three categories: white Creoles; mixed-race Creoles of French, African, and Native American descent; and…
