Opinion: Why Bad Bunny's Halftime Show Was a Win for All of Us

The struggles for civil rights and labor rights were built on cross-racial solidarity

Bad Bunny’s SuperBowl Halftime show was significant to the Brown community, especially because of what is going on right now with the ICE raids in 2026. Most recently, 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father Adrian Conejo Arias were abducted by ICE in Minneapolis.

But this goes back even further.

I read a lot of statuses on Facebook, which I do solely to keep me updated on what is happening in my hometown, Boston. The lore on the tension between Hispanic and Black people has been running deep for a very long time. Just this past summer, another dispute between Black and Hispanic people took place around the time of the annual Hispanic parade. The argument was that Black people were upset at the fact that there was no police presence during the Hispanic parade. Some argued that the police were present, but others argued back stating “not enough.” They went further on to say that when it was the Caribbean Carnival parade, the police presence was much heavier.

Ever since I was a little kid growing up inBoston, I was always in attendance at the Carnival. Each year looked different, and as I got older, it looked a lot different from when I was young. It looks different because there were always reported incidents involving people getting trampled because they were running from a fight, gunshots, or someone was actually getting shot and in some cases killed. Dawnn Jaffier was killed in 2014 due to the violence that got wrapped up into Carnival that year, which caused the city to be on high alert. In my opinion, it was for good reason. We went to these events not so we would have to run or be looking over their shoulder, but to enjoy the festivities.

The difference in police presence was never about favoritism. It was simply about safety concerns. This is where we need to do our own part and remove the violence from our own celebrations. We should be using those moments to celebrate our culture in unity, not to be at war with each other or to get caught up in negative, uncalled for debates. We see it through our own President and how he speaks so poorly about us. So I believe that we shouldn’t add to the fire and hate on one another, but be unified like we are supposed to be and bring life into each other.

I know some Black people may say, “This isn’t my fight,” and when it comes to us, “they don’t fight for us.” But I say that all of that needs to change. It needs to change because, though ICE may be targeting Hispanic people right now, Black people aren’t “the favored” either. And Black people will be the next target. We must unify and work together.

We must remember our linked history. The struggles for civil rights and labor rights were built on cross-racial solidarity. Our music, our slang, our fashion have always been a conversation, a back and forth that created something new and powerful. To deny that connection is to deny our own cultural power. 

There are a lot of Black people who were saying that the halftime show was boring and just an overall bad performance, which I think is, of course, their opinion. When it came to the Hispanic parade, Black people spoke poorly then as well. I spoke to my father who had similar thoughts because he couldn’t understand what Bad Bunny was saying, so we had an hour-long conversation about it.

My opinion on it was, last year we had “ours” with Kendrick Lamar, and that halftime show was labeled “The Blackest Super Bowl of all time.” And now we have “The most Hispanic Super Bowl of all time.” Then I had n epiphany: “That was the best Super Bowl in a long time.”

I believe Black a nd Brown people play a huge factor in the music industry, and right now we’re trending. Historically, we were made to be like puppets, and we are always being mocked at by the higher power. This is why we need people who look like us and support us in positions of power to ensure our culture is not exploited for propaganda and profit.

If we just learn to see everything as a win when it comes to us, and support and make noise so our voices aren’t silenced, then the power that we do have, we can use that power to challenge and overcome our oppressors.