Ice-T photo by Ullstein Bild/Getty Images, Beyoncé photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images, Bruce Springsteen photo by SGranitz/Getty Images
A few days ago, the news broke that the Miami Fraternal Order of Police is planning a boycott of Beyoncé’s April 27th tour kickoff in Miami, following her Super Bowl performance in which she led dancers dressed like Black Panthers in a powerful (and playful!) performance of "Formation." Bey’s latest single, as Pitchfork’s Britt Julious notes, is unapologetic in its rallying around identity: "Beyoncé is a black woman artist making black art for black women." The song’s video uses intentional imagery to contextualize this aim, as the New South Negress’ Dr. Zandria Robinson carefully unpacks: "Beyoncé places her own reckless, country blackness–one of afros, cornrows, and negro noses, brown liquor and brown girls, hot sauce, and of brown boys and cheddar bay biscuits–in conversation with and as descended from a broader southern blackness that is frequently obscured and unseen in national discourses, save for as (dying, lynched, grotesque, excessive) spectacle."
It’s no wonder, then, why a police organization—undoubtedly conscious of the current public discourse about black lives in conflict with police violence—might find this particular pop song and its performance threatening. However, the history and context surrounding these kinds of boycotts goes deeper than "Formation." It’s part of a pattern of politically strategic law enforcement opposition to very specific anti-police sentiments expressed in art. In every instance where law enforcement has opposed the arts in this way, black American lives and voices are at the core of the issues.
As Dr. Eric Mayer notes in "Rap Music and White Fears," white artists like Eric Clapton and Lou Reed—who either reinterpreted black music (Clapton’s version of Bob Marley’s "I Shot the Sheriff") or made unpointed reference to anti-police violence (Reed’s "Romeo Had Juliette")—escape the same kind of response from law enforcement. The white artists highlighted below refer directly to specific incidents of police brutality or unfair legal proceedings towards black Americans in order to receive that kind of response, while black artists only have to be black and vocal. Also as our timeline illustrates, there is often very specific strategic context surrounding every law enforcement boycott. (It’s worth noting that police unions, unlike most other labor unions, are conservative in nature and have a long history of involvement with the Republican party.)
1992: Body Count’s "Cop Killer"
With support from local government, members of Congress, and even then-Vice President Dan Quayle, the Dallas Police Association and the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas campaigned together to pressure the newly merged Time-Warner to stop selling Ice-T and Body Count’s Body Count album, which was released on Warner-owned label Sire and contained the song "Cop Killer." (Of note: The National Black Police Association was the lone police representative organization to come out against the boycott.) Despite public support for Ice-T from Time-Warner’s co-CEO Gerald Levin, it did not take long for many stores to return their copies of Body Count. After prolonged pressure, including a July 1992 Time-Warner shareholders meeting at which minor shareholder and neoconservative activist Charlton Heston recited the lyrics to "Cop Killer" (among other Body Count songs), Ice-T decided to remove "Cop Killer" from Body Count, and left Sire Records altogether in 1993.
Critical context: Ice-T had been performing "Cop Killer," which was written in 1990, in large venues (including Lollapalooza) before it was recorded. During the year Body Count was recorded (1991), black motorist Rodney King was stopped by four white LAPD officers for a traffic violation and beaten more than 50 times with nightsticks during the arrest proceedings; infamously, the beating was caught on tape by a white bystander. The final recorded version of "Cop Killer" referenced the case. Body Count was released in March of 1992, as the well-publicized trial of the policemen charged with assault and/or excessive force in the King case came to a head. The police’s acquittal was the catalyst for the April-May 1992 L.A. riots. In May 1992, the campaign against "Cop Killer" began.
Second part of critical context: 1992 was a presidential election year.
1999: Rage Against the Machine, Beastie Boys, and Mumia Abu-Jamal
The national Fraternal Order of Police called for a boycott of Rage Against the Machine and the Beastie Boys, among other artists, due to their vocal (and, in some cases, financial) support of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a radio reporter, former president of the Philadelphia Association for Black Journalists, and ex-Black Panther, who was convicted of the 1981 murder of Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death row. A January 1999 benefit concert in Rutherford, N.J. for Abu-Jamal’s legal defense fund—where Beastie Boy Adam Yauch told the crowd, “Mumia did not receive a fair trial, that’s something everybody in this country should be concerned about”—was the focus of the boycott. Some fans did return their tickets as a show of support for police, though about 16,000 people still paid for the concert. Sting, whose name had been attached to a long list of artists supporting Abu-Jamal’s innocence in a 1995 New York Times ad, was the highest-profile artist to back off support at that time. Very little else, however, came of the boycott threats, and as Abu-Jamal’s case continued to move slowly through the machinery of judicial review, the campaign lost steam.
Critical context: 1998-1999 was a crucial time for Abu-Jamal, whose state appeals had run out in 1998; 1999 saw the decades-long case move to federal district court from the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Rage Against the Machine, the Beastie Boys, and Black Star provided considerable fundraising and high-profile notoriety for the case, which culminated in Abu-Jamal’s resentencing to life in prison without parole.
Second part of critical context: Primary election campaigning for the upcoming 2000 presidential election was beginning around this time.
2000: Bruce Springsteen’s "American Skin (41 Shots)"
The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association of New York City urged officers not on duty during Bruce Springsteen’s June 2000 run of ten Madison Square Garden concerts to boycott the shows and any future Springsteen gigs, due to the Boss’ song "American Skin (41 Shots)," about the February 1999 killing of unarmed West African man Amadou Diallo by NYPD officers. (The song’s subtitle and repeated refrain of "41 shots" references the number of times Diallo was shot by the four officers in question, who claimed they believed Diallo began reaching for a gun when confronted. He was actually reaching for his wallet.) Despite incendiary (and frankly bizarre) rhetoric from New York State Fraternal Order of Police then-president Bob Lucente (who called Springsteen a "floating fag"), and support from then-mayor Giuliani, the concerts were generally well-received by media and fans alike, and the boycott fizzled.
Critical context: In March of 1999, a Bronx grand jury indicted the four NYPD officers involved in Diallo’s killing on charges of second-degree murder and reckless endangerment. After the trial’s highly contested move to Albany (because of all the publicity locally), those officers were acquitted of all charges in February of 2000. In April of 2000, Diallo’s family filed a massive civil lawsuit against New York City, which did not reach settlement until 2004.
Second part of critical context: You guessed it, presidential election year.
Also of note: Springsteen would dedicate "American Skin (41 Shots)" to Trayvon Martin at a live performance in 2012.
2015: N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton Biopic
The LAPD Police Protective League protested the August release of F. Gary Gray’s N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton, with its leader Dennis Zine saying the film "portrays police as beating machines." The protest appeared to be mostly online, confined primarily to one TMZ interview with Zine and unnamed LAPD officers who agreed with Zine. While N.W.A. were an extremely outspoken group, and Straight Outta Compton (the 1988 album) was one of the first albums to be labeled with the RIAA’s infamous Parental Advisory sticker, there was no organized police boycott for N.W.A. at the time, despite the album containing the infamous anthem "Fuck Tha Police." Law enforcement agencies certainly voiced individual protest, but there was no coordinated effort on the level of the “Cop Killer” boycott. (Though in a way, the Parental Advisory sticker and the efforts of Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center paved the way in cultural dialogue for the “Cop Killer” boycott to occur.) The protest of Gray’s film, then, felt less like a response to the film itself than overall delayed, concerted retribution for N.W.A. and “Fuck Tha Police.” Despite initial sound and fury, very little came of the LAPD’s protest in terms of ticket sale impact or increased cultural dialogue.
Though not music-related, shortly thereafter the Straight Outta Compton incident, the NYPD police union called for a boycott of Quentin Tarantino’s films, following Tarantino’s appearance alongside Dr. Cornel West, the families of individuals killed by police (including the Diallo family), and anti-carceral activist organizations for coordinated actions in New York City as part of an event called Rise Up October. There was dissent even from within the NYPD, however, and this issue, too, dissipated relatively quickly.
Critical context:For the past few years, Black Lives Matter—a network and movement started by three black, queer women as responses to Trayvon Martin’s 2012 death and his killer George Zimmerman’s subsequent acquittal, and the 2014 killing of Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson and Wilson’s subsequent acquittal—is one of many black activist organizations, like Rise Up October’s Stop Police Terror, keeping police violence against unarmed black Americans in the news and resistance going in the streets and on social media. Without organizations like Black Lives Matter, Stop Police Terror, and the Black Youth Project, our cultural dialogue as a whole at this time would doubtless look extremely different. Though the roots of the protest to Gray’s film go back to the late 1980s, without Black Lives Matter and other such organizations on the front lines of culture and society, would police unions find such art so urgently confrontational?
Second part of critical context: The upcoming 2016 presidential election.
It’s not hard to see how the Miami Police Union’s planned Beyoncé boycott factors into this established pattern; the combination of electoral politics and media attention to cases that highlight police brutality and legal injustice is a perfect high-visibility field for an organization invested in keeping things the way they are, to fight social change that utilizes both celebrity symbolism and our strong emotional connection to the arts. However, even in the most nominally effective police union protests, there is rarely a unified front even from within police ranks, and most of these boycotts historically end up passing quickly.
Correction (2/25/16 3:45 p.m.): A previous version of this article stated that the Bruce Springsteen song "American Skin (41 Shots)" does not appear on any of his albums. The song appeared on his 2014 album High Hopes.