Let me start with the obvious: Puerto Rico is part of the United States. If you keep forgetting that, maybe read a map. But that fact seems to blow open minds like a shock collar when the MAGA brigade—provoked by Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl headline—whips out the same ugly refrains: “He’s not American.” “Latin takeover.” “Play it in Spanish? We’ll tune out.” The rancor is a rerun of a bad TV show that refuses to get canceled.
Bad Bunny, Puerto Rican nationalist, global icon, is now slated to headline the Super Bowl’s halftime show, and suddenly here comes the backlash: racist op-eds, screeching social media threads, white men posturing behind caps and keyboards. “He’s not American!” they crow. News flash: he is. He has a U.S. passport, he lives in the American narrative, he speaks more than your hate. But this moment is less about denying his citizenship than denying that growing minority voices should ever occupy the center stage.
The Setup They Can’t Accept
A major global platform picks Bad Bunny for the Super Bowl. The organizers pitch it as a milestone—for Latin music, for cultural visibility, for the idea that the biggest stage doesn’t always belong to English. The artist frames it as a statement of pride: “this is for my people, my history.” The halftime show becomes an act of reclamation in a culture that keeps erasing or marginalizing non-English expression.
But the backlash? It behaves like a 1950s night watchman awakened by traffic. “It’ll split the audience,” they whine. “It’s not American music!” they thunder. “He won’t sing in English, so you know what that means.” They foist the same tired script: language becomes a barrier, identity becomes a threat, difference becomes disloyalty. In their minds, if you don’t baptize every lyric in English, you are foreign. If your accent is strong, your claim is weak.
This is not about musical taste. It’s about ownership of American identity. The rage isn’t against lyrics—it’s against who gets to be the face of America.
Rhetorical Weaponization: The Us vs. Them Script
Once Bad Bunny’s name dropped, the narrative machines engaged. You saw it on talk radio, on comment sections, in op-eds masquerading as cautionary tales. The usual tropes:
- “He’s not American enough.” As if a birth certificate needs “sameness” to validate your voice.
- “We don’t know what he’s saying.” A lazy dog whistle for “I don’t want the unfamiliar in my ears.”
- “It’ll alienate English speakers.” Translation: I don’t want to listen to you.
- “This is politics disguised as entertainment.” As if every white artist ever picked was neutral, colorless, beyond politics.
They don’t say, “I’m comfortable only with the culture I dominate.” They say, “This is un-American.” In their script, difference becomes disloyalty, representation becomes revolt, sound becomes sabotage.
But That Map You Forgot…
Let me remind you (because some of you clearly missed a history class): Puerto Rico is not foreign. It’s a U.S. territory. Its people are U.S. citizens. They carry passports, vote in primaries, obey U.S. laws (in most respects). They pay some federal taxes, receive many federal benefits. Their status is complex—yes—but their American-ness is not conditional.
Yet the backlash acts as though “American” is criteria reserved for only the whiteness of certain accents, a theater of exclusion masquerading as patriotism. If your music is Latin trap, your skin darker, your rhythm syncopated, suddenly that DNA becomes foreign by dialect, not geography.
The irony is thick: every slur, every tweet saying “not American,” is a confession of who gets to define America. The backlash didn’t start with Bad Bunny—he just cracked open their fragile definition.
Cultural Infiltration or Cultural Flourish?
When Bad Bunny takes that stage, it’s not an invasion. It’s growth. A country changes shapes across decades. The Super Bowl halftime show is not a fortress—it’s a signal. Let the music speak across borders within the same country we already share. The invitation isn’t betrayal. It’s inclusion.
They’ll pretend it’s perilous—“You’ll lose the core audience.” Fine. Let the “core audience” expand. The song doesn’t lose meaning if more people hear it. The national identity doesn’t fracture if more voices sing it. The backlash fears that inclusion means loss, but the real loss is in never letting difference in in the first place.
The Stage They Fear
Their dread is not accidental. It’s structural. They fear this:
- A Spanish-language rapper becomes the face of a national moment.
- Millions hear lyrics they cannot translate.
- The platform invites people who were always here—just not spotlighted.
So they lash back. They mispronounce his name. They insist on English. They erect fences in their vocabulary: “foreign,” “not mine,” “not us.” But the stage is theirs too, if they’ll let it be.
What the Backlash Exposes
1. Insecurity at the Center. The backlash reveals that their “center” is a fortress built of fear. They govern the appearance of normalcy—until they see color, sound, difference—and then they riot in outrage.
2. Rhetorical Possession. They demand that what they refuse to let others do—heal language, own identity—they reserve as their exclusive domain: patriotic speech, cultural definition, aesthetic standard.
3. Racism Disguised as Critique. Every “concerned opinion piece” becomes a layer of denial. Critique of his selection often drips with the same rhetoric used against minority artists for decades: your accent is unrefined, your passion is theatrical, your voice is noisy.
4. The Redefinition of “American Music.” They think American music is folk, country, classic rock—safe, English-only, sanitized. But music in America has always been hybrid: jazz, gospel, blues, Latin, hip-hop. They pretend difference is new. It is old.
How We Watch the Tilt
When Bad Bunny performs, we’re watching more than musical notes. We’re watching whether the backlash narrative repeats or cracks. Are networks going to mute creole lines? Are sponsors going to pressure cleanness? Will translation overlays appear? Will camera calls preferentially frame him through white audiences?
We’ll watch lights, staging, who dances with him, whether the production bows to comfort zones or stretches them. Every camera cue, costume change, guest cameo is now political spectacle. Because the battle is no longer just for song—it’s for who gets to define a nation’s greatest moment.
A Satellite Fact
Remember when hip-hop, rock, disco, salsa were once considered fringe? The same types who balk now once railed at the origins of Elvis, Bob Marley, hip-hop, Latin pop. What today is “not American enough” was yesterday’s rebellious sound. The evolution is constant. The backlash recycles every era’s fear that culture might shift under their feet.
Final Word: You Can’t Deny a Country to Its People
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl headline is not a reversal—it’s a correction. It says Latin voices belong in the middle. It says American identity is not about exile but inclusion. It says that the shield of whiteness over America’s identity is cracking, finally, and music pours through.
The MAGA whine—he’s not American—is the anthem of fear masquerading as patriotism. It’s a way to keep doors shut while pretending they’re just checking IDs. But every time they scream “not American,” they confirm he already is: a citizen, a star, a voice. They’re not looking at what he does—only at who he is, and what they fear the future becoming.
So let them roar. Let the stage shake. Because in that vibration is change. Music is too powerful to be tamed. Let it drown out the backlash.