Blacks Supporting Bad Bunny's Spanish-Only Super Bowl is About as Loco as You Can Get
The Anti-Black History in Latino Communities Makes Celebrating a Spanish-Only Super Bowl Performance Particularly Galling for Black Americans
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl 2026 halftime show
Millions tuned in to Levi’s Stadium on February 8, 2026, for what was billed as a celebration of Latin culture. Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican reggaeton superstar, delivered an energetic set of hits like “Tití Me Preguntó” and “Yo Perreo Sola,” featuring surprise guests and Puerto Rican pride.
Performing entirely (or primarily) in Spanish during the Super Bowl LX halftime show, broadcast to millions of viewers, sends a powerful message: This cultural moment isn’t fully for everyone. English, the common language that has helped unify diverse American experiences—including Black contributions to music, sports, and civil rights—took a backseat.
For Black Americans who’ve spent generations fighting for visibility and respect in mainstream English-speaking spaces, Bad Bunny’s refusal to incorporate meaningful English feels like a snub. It’s insulting to watch a global platform sidelined for one linguistic group while claiming broad representation.
Worse still is seeing segments of the Black community applaud this as “solidarity” or a win for people of color. That’s about as loco as it gets. Let’s not sugarcoat it: The history of anti-Black racism within Hispanic and Latino communities runs deep.
The Deep History of Anti-Black Racism in Latino and Hispanic Communities
From the Spanish colonizers who stratified societies by skin color in Latin America, placing lighter-skinned folks at the top and Black and Indigenous people at the bottom, to modern-day colorism that favors “whiter” Latinos over their darker kin, this isn’t ancient history—it’s alive and well.
Scholars like Tanya Katerí Hernández have documented how this “racial innocence” allows Latinos to deny their own anti-Black biases, even as they perpetuate discrimination in families, workplaces, and politics.
Remember the 2022 L.A. City Council scandal, where Latino leaders were caught on tape spewing anti-Black and anti-Indigenous slurs while scheming to consolidate power? That’s not an outlier; it’s a symptom of a broader pattern where Latinos have historically adopted anti-Black attitudes to climb the American racial hierarchy, often at the expense of Black communities.
Competition for Resources: Black Americans as Foundational Citizens
Black Americans are foundational to this country—descendants of those who built it through enslaved labor, fought in its wars, and powered its civil rights movements. We’re not immigrants vying for a piece of the pie; we’re the ones who helped bake it. Yet, in cities like Los Angeles and beyond, we’ve seen Latinos leverage their growing numbers to edge out Black representation in politics, jobs, and education.
Housing opportunities and even union jobs have become battlegrounds in many cities where anti-Black sentiment in some Latino communities tips the scales unfairly against Black Americans.
For instance, in workplaces with growing Latino majorities, reports of discrimination—including colorism and exclusion—have surfaced in high-profile cases and scholarly analyses, fueling tensions over low-wage roles and union access. Studies further show that when Latinos feel their American identity is threatened or “downgraded” (such as through perceived marginalization or direct comparison to Black Americans), they’re more likely to express racial resentment toward Blacks and oppose policies addressing systemic inequities—like affirmative action or federal aid benefiting Black communities.
Research from the American National Election Studies and experimental work demonstrates that stronger identification as “American” among Latinos correlates with higher anti-Black prejudice, which in turn weakens support for Black-centered policies. In one set of studies, inducing a sense of threatened or lowered American status dramatically increased racial resentment among Latinos (particularly liberals in some cases) and slashed backing for pro-Black initiatives.
These dynamics highlight real intergroup frictions—not zero-sum inevitability, but patterns rooted in historical hierarchies, colorism, and competition for scarce resources in urban settings. Black Americans, as foundational citizens who’ve built this nation through centuries of struggle, deserve priority in addressing these inequities rather than being sidelined in the name of broader “POC” solidarity.
Bad Bunny’s Superbowl 2026 halftime performance without English, underscores this divide—it’s a cultural flex that ignores the shared struggles but amplifies the competition. Black Americans should feel insulted, not inspired.
I got up left and went to sleep on the whole Super Bowl, salute on the article!
I do get your sentiment. I am in full agreement that there is anti-Black racism within certain Latino spaces; however, the focus on language alone as an excluding factor falls into the very ideas of anti-Black racism. I would say this, though: there are Black folks all over the world and in America that speak Spanish, there are Afro-Latinos that speak Spanish, Black folks from the Caribbean that speak Spanish and there is a large segment of the USA population that speaks Spanish, so the premise of using language as a deciding factor of what language is used at the Super Bowl is quite frankly no substantial.
Secondly, let's also remember that the very ideals of anti-Black racism are baked into English, which is from the Imperial logics of the monarchy of England; maybe there is value in destabilizing this idea that English is the one and only language that needs to be spoken on one of the largest musical stages. As per your own analysis, historical hierarchies employ the use of English to perpetuate ongoing forms of racism.
You used a Spanish word in this article, would you suppose then that by using a Spanish word you are excluding people from reading this article? I would say "no." All languages are valid and need to be celebrated. Let's not forget that for people of African descent across the world, some have lost their traditional languages because they were forced to speak English.
Finally, I am not against your argument about anti-Black racism, I am saying let's not fall into the colonial practices that blind us from focusing on the many forms of White supremacy.