It would have made sense if Beyoncé decided to perform songs that were more culturally ambiguous, as to not alienate the people she was hired to entertain. However, before a mostly white audience, Beyoncé sang “Lift Every Voice,” widely regarded as the black national anthem. That song melted into “Formation,” her own pro-black anthem, where she talks about loving “Negro” noses and positions herself as a black Bill Gates.

She also amplified Malcolm X’s famous words about black women: “The most disrespected woman in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman.” This centering of black womanhood is not what black people have been taught to do when given as much power and attention as Beyoncé has.

It would have been reasonable to assume Beyoncé would perform the entire show in a glamorous couture number, like the Nefertiti-inspired costume she came onstage in. Respectability is also imagery: Black people are told, when we gain power, and are under the gaze of the public, we must always wear our most formal and elegant attire.

Instead, with millions of people watching in the desert and online, Beyoncé reappeared in blue distressed denim shorts and a hoodie advertising a fake historically black college. Success does not need to have a preferred style; a black person does not have to wear a glamorous gown or a tailored suit to captivate the imagination of the public. Beyoncé shows that talent and discipline are enough.

She follows in the tradition of black performers like Michael Jackson and Tina Turner, but she is unique in imagining blackness as something so big. To Beyoncé, attending a historically black college is more than a niche experience coveted only by students and alumni. Instead, it’s something thematically paramount and worthy of an enormous stadium.

You might think that Beyoncé’s promotion of historically black colleges and their intellectual traditions also might have conflicted with her sexually charged songs like “Partition” and “Drunk in Love.” We’re taught that an intellectual being can never be sexual one. This is especially true for black people who have been hypersexualized in media and daily life. So it wouldn’t have been odd for her to edit her sexuality to fit society’s ideas of what it means to be proud, black and smart.