When the Center Shifts: Bad Bunny and the Politics of Cultural Power, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. April 30, 2026

When the Center Shifts: Bad Bunny and the Politics of Cultural Power

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 30, 2026

Bad Bunny’s Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show performance

united music fans around the world, according to real-time listening data from Apple Music and Shazam.

What does it mean for Latinas and Latinos to “win” the culture war? Not perform it. Not survive it. Not even just contest it. But win it—at a time when immigrants are under renewed political attack, when curriculum battles rage across states like Texas, and when the very meaning of belonging is once again being contested.

The answer came into sharp, unmistakable focus in that unforgettable cultural moment when Bad Bunny took center stage in a spectacle as massive and symbolically loaded as the Super Bowl.

What unfolded was not simply a performance—it was a cultural intervention at scale. An estimated 128.2 million viewers watched live in the United States alone, with the performance generating over 4.1 billion views globally within 24 hours across broadcast, streaming, and social media platforms (Brown, 2026; PR Newswire, 2026). This was not marginal visibility. This was mass presence—a re-centering of language, sound, and identity before one of the largest audiences in the world, without translation, dilution, or apology.

And it was deeply personal.

You could feel it—not as branding, not as choreography, but as conviction. This was not an artist accommodating an audience. This was an artist bringing his full world with him, insisting that the audience meet him there. Spanish was not a flourish; it was the foundation. Puerto Rico was not a reference; it was the frame. The performance did not ask for inclusion. It assumed presence.

That is what winning looks like.

But this moment also reveals something deeper. For generations, Latina/os have been cast through a narrow and racialized script—criminal, foreign, disposable. These narratives were not accidental; they were produced through institutions that controlled what stories could be told and how. Film, television, journalism, and publishing have long functioned as gatekeeping structures that shape public perception and, in turn, public policy. When a community is consistently misrepresented, it becomes easier to marginalize it politically, economically, and socially.

Culture, in this sense, governs. It shapes what feels legitimate, who is perceived as belonging, and which policies are seen as reasonable or necessary. It prepares the ground on which law and policy take hold.

This is why moments like Bad Bunny’s matter so profoundly. They do not simply “represent” Latina/os; they reconfigure the terms of representation itself. They shift the center. They expand what is legible, audible, and possible. They interrupt the long-standing assumption that Latina/o/x/e identity must be translated, softened, or made palatable to be accepted. More than visibility, this is a form of epistemic power—the authority to define reality rather than be defined by it.

But we must be clear: this kind of moment does not emerge out of nowhere. It is the result of years of refusal, experimentation, and risk. It is built on the insistence that one’s language, one’s rhythms, one’s histories are not obstacles to success—but the very source of it.

That insistence is political.

If we understand culture as a site of power, then “winning” the culture war requires more than visibility. It requires control over the production of meaning. It means moving from being objects of representation to being authors of narrative. It means asking not only who is on the screen, but who is behind the camera, who is writing the script, who is financing the project, and who ultimately decides what stories get told.

And this is where the analysis must turn to structure.

Latinas/os cannot rely on institutions that have historically excluded them to suddenly tell their stories with nuance and care. Change requires pressure—organized, sustained, strategic. It requires building alternative platforms while also demanding accountability from existing ones. It requires recognizing that culture industries respond to economic and reputational forces, and leveraging that reality to push for transformation. This is the work of building cultural sovereignty—not just inclusion within existing systems, but the capacity to shape them.

And this is where the analysis must also turn inward.

As a people, this requires more than visibility—it demands a deeper reckoning with who we are and how we show up for one another. Our diversity is not incidental; it is foundational. We are Indigenous, Afro-Latina/o, Afro-Indigenous, Caribbean, Central and South American, immigrant and U.S.-born, multilingual, multiracial, and multigenerational. 

We also name ourselves in ways that reflect history, place, and struggle: Mexican, Mexican American, Chicana/o, Tejana/o, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Nuyorican, Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Brazilian, and more. We are also gender diverse, encompassing women, men, nonbinary, queer, and trans communities whose experiences and leadership have long been central to our survival and resistance.

These identities are not interchangeable, nor are they reducible to a single narrative. They carry distinct histories of migration, colonization, dispossession, resilience, and creativity. This is not a complexity to be managed or simplified for public consumption—it is a source of intellectual, cultural, and political strength. And yet, it is too often flattened, sanitized, or erased in ways that limit how we are seen—and how we come to see ourselves.

We are American.

We are not uninteresting. We have never been.

At the same time, we must confront a harder truth: there is no path to transforming cultural power without transforming ourselves. Colorism, anti-Blackness, and the persistent marginalization of Indigenous, Afro-Latina/o, and Afro-Indigenous voices are not peripheral issues—they are central to how power operates within our own communities. 

Consider, for example, how lighter-skinned Latina/os continue to dominate media representation, while Afro-Latina/o and Indigenous voices remain underrepresented or erased. Left unaddressed, these dynamics replicate the very logics of exclusion we seek to dismantle. A politics of representation that elevates only the most palatable, light-skinned, or culturally assimilated among us is not transformation—it is tokenization, fostering an illusion of inclusion.

If we are serious about reshaping the narrative, then we must be equally serious about building a cultural and political project that is explicitly anti-racist, anti-colonial, decolonial, and accountable to those most historically erased—particularly within our own ranks.

Winning, then, is not simply about being seen. It is about who among us gets seen, and how.

Bad Bunny’s rise—and moments like that Super Bowl performance—also remind us of something else: the power of imagination. When communities are consistently erased or distorted, their ability to imagine themselves differently is constrained. Cultural production—music, art, storytelling—is not ornamental. It is foundational. It shapes what people believe is possible, who belongs, and what futures can be envisioned.

That is why these moments resonate so deeply. They do not just entertain; they expand the horizon of the imaginable.

And yet, even as we celebrate them, we must resist the temptation to treat them as endpoints. They are not. They are openings—evidence of what becomes possible when the rules are broken, when the center shifts, when the story is reclaimed.

This brings us directly to Texas.

In Texas, where battles over education, curriculum, immigration, and public life continue to intensify, the stakes of this cultural struggle are especially clear. The fight over curriculum—what is taught, whose histories are included, whose knowledge is valued—is inseparable from the broader struggle over narrative power. Whether in the revision of social studies standards, attacks on ethnic studies, or policies that reshape access to higher education, we see again and again how narrative frames policy, and policy structures possibility.

This is why the question of “winning” matters.

Latinas/os will not win the culture war by asking to be included in someone else’s story. We will not win by translating ourselves into frameworks that were never designed for us. And we will not win by mistaking visibility for power.

We win by reshaping the story itself—by insisting that our languages, our histories, our cultures, and our communities are not peripheral, but central. We win by building and controlling the platforms through which meaning is produced. We win by confronting internal inequities even as we challenge external ones. And we win by refusing to separate culture from the broader structures of power that govern our lives.

What Bad Bunny showed us on that stage was not just performance.

Todd Rosenberg/Getty Images

It was posture.

A posture of refusal. Of affirmation. Of unapologetic presence.

And perhaps most importantly, a posture that said:

We are not asking to be part of the story.

We are here to rewrite it.

And we can rewrite it—centered in our own stories and in solidarity with broader struggles for justice that extend beyond us.

In doing so, we help open space for a future that is more just, more truthful, and more fully shared.

Because the story that comes next should belong to us all.

References

Brown, M. (2026, February 10). Super Bowl LX viewership second highest all-time; Bad Bunny has 128.2M viewers. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2026/02/10/super-bowl-lx-viewership-second-highest-all-time-bad-bunny-has-1282m-viewers/

PR Newswire. (2026, February 10). Bad Bunny sets global viewership record for most-watched Apple Music Super Bowl halftime show performance of all time, reaching 4.157 billion views. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bad-bunny-sets-global-viewership-record-for-most-watched-apple-music-super-bowl-halftime-show-performance-of-all-time-reaching-4-157-billion-views-302701639.html 

The MAGA kids are not all White: Tokenizing Black Conservatism

Friends:

The Washington Post’s profile of CJ Pearson’s “Cruel Kids Summer” party shows how Trumpism is being rebranded: young, multiracial, and “fun.” Designer suits, corporate sponsorships, and celebrity cameos make MAGA look like the new cool—and, as Jesús Rodríguez reports, even Meta footed the bill for at least one of these lavish spectacles.

One can’t help but wonder if any of these young conservatives ever sat through a serious course on African American history. Because behind the velvet blazers and Soulja Boy performances is an administration dismantling DEI, gutting civil rights enforcement, deporting immigrants, and rewriting history to soften slavery. The paradox is glaring: MAGA demonizes diversity while using Black conservatives as cultural cover for White nationalist policies.

This isn’t representation—it’s tokenization. And it plays out the same with Black or Latino conservatives, many of whom are derided for aligning with a party that has inflicted such harshness on their communities.

The dynamic is clear: powerful actors are weaponizing culture to normalize injustice. Educators, activists, and communities must call this out and create spaces where justice—not spectacle—defines the future.

-Angela Valenzuela

The MAGA kids are not all White

A new generation of young, Black conservatives is trying to gain sway within Trump’s GOP. They have some ideas for how to keep the party going.

Pro-Trump politico CJ Pearson, center, poses with attendees of his “Cruel Kids Summer” party in July.
(Photos by Maxine Wallace/The Washington Post)

by Jesús Rodríguez| September 2, 2025 | Washington Post

CJ Pearson was perched atop a set of stairs, overlooking a crowd of hundreds, in a massive lofted apartment near H Street NE on a sweltering July afternoon. He wore a bone-colored suit from Suitsupply, looking like he was aboard a Biscayne Bay cruise. He yelled into a microphone as the guests — a collage of congressional staffers, conservative content creators and assorted Washington arrivistes, all dressed in white — erupted in cheers.

Pearson was throwing this party, called “Cruel Kids Summer,” as a burlesque of a New York magazine cover story from January that had included a photo from Pearson’s inauguration weekend party with the headline “THE CRUEL KIDS’ TABLE.” Six months later, Pearson was still miffed about the fact that the reporter had said that “almost everyone” in the new young conservative scene was White, that the cover photo from his party depicted a nearly all-White tableau — and that he, a Black man, had not been interviewed. “The media accused me of throwing an all-White party,” he told his guests at another point, later in the afternoon, exaggerating. “So we threw an ALL. WHITE. PARTY.”

President Donald Trump’s Washington faces a problem right now, in his opinion: too many receptions, not enough parties.

Pearson, 23, is a party guy; at the University of Alabama, he pledged Theta Chi and left with a firm grasp of how a bad gender ratio can mess up the vibe. Of Republican events, he says, “it’s always like, 70 percent men, 30 percent women, which is not even fun for the girls at that point.” He can often be spotted at social gatherings around town sporting a red velvet blazer.

He’s a new presence in the capital, but also a very old one: an ambitious young scenester who seems to be counting down the years before he is eligible to run for Congress. Formally, he’s a consultant. He is also a prolific poster, with social feeds calling diversity, equity and inclusion efforts a “disease” and arguing that Trump’s recent deployment of federal troops in D.C. will “save countless black lives.” And he is one of several Black MAGA figures vying for status and influence in the aftermath of an election in which Trump, long seen as an avatar of the White working class, returned to power on the strength of a more diverse coalition. This has inspired a new and hopeful belief on the right: that Trumpism is now youthful, sexy, multiracial. And fun.

The Cruel Kids Summer party was being sponsored by Meta, Pearson said, and held at a brick-walled loft apartment building owned by child-actor-turned-crypto-entrepreneur Brock Pierce, who rented the space to Pearson. (The event will end up costing $80,000, though Pearson didn’t say how much of that Meta covered, and the company did not respond to requests for comment.) Soulja Boy was scheduled to perform. Pearson said he expected Kash Patel, the FBI director, to stop by. Before entering the loft, guests were offered cans of fruit-punch-flavored hard seltzer, which were chilled but somehow went down warm. Inside, there were issues of Foreign Affairs magazine, a box labeled “horse medicine supply,” a shelf with books about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and whatappeared to be a taxidermied bison wearing a white “Make America Party Again” hat — one of 375 Pearson had made for the occasion.

On a wall of a sitting room, there was a painting of Pierce wearing an orange fedora. Real-life Pierce was also there, wearing a real-life orange fedora. He described the apartment’s decor as a mix of Americana and “steampunk.” He gestured at a giant chandelier. “From the Waldorf Astoria in New York,” he said over blaring Euroclub music. “Mr. Saxobeat” blended, somehow, into “Billie Jean.” Upstairs, past a security guard checking wristbands, there was a lofted area, where Pearson’s friends, such as Xaviaer DuRousseau, an on-camera personality for PragerU, and Janiyah Thomas, the Trump 2024 campaign’s Black media director, were lounging.

Janiyah Thomas, left, at Pearson’s party, where the dress code called for all-white attire.

Janiyah Thomas, left, at Pearson’s party, where the dress code called for all-white attire.

What appeared to be a taxidermied bison at Pearson’s party sports a “Make America Party Again” hat.

DuRousseau is 28 and would love to become “the right-wing Oprah” or “a conservative combination of Dr. Phil and Wendy Williams.” Born in Chicago and raised in rural Illinois, he now lives the upscale cosmopolitan life of a modern content creator in Los Angeles, sipping Erewhon smoothies and posting videos to his more than 500,000 Instagram followers on topics such as Juneteenth (“There is no such thing as a Black Independence Day, but if that’s what you wanna call Juneteenth, then I don’t wanna see y’all twerking on a boat on July Fourth”) and the recent American Eagle ad campaign with actor Sydney Sweeney (“Hot White people, this is your sign to stop being ashamed of your Caucasian excellence”). At the party, he was wearing a cream camp-collar knit shirt and rectangular shades, carrying a miniature electric fan. “There’s so much opportunity for me here to get involved more in consulting,” DuRousseau said a few days later, pondering his future over an iced almond matcha latte. (Maybe he’ll go to business school? He’s not sure.) He was setting up networking coffees with people here in D.C. so he can get more into policy work.

Thomas was sitting at a sofa in the VIP section, under a skylight, in a strapless white top and white boot-cut pants. She is also a consultant, and she says she is working with a criminal justice reform group, a company in the sports-betting world and a celebrity. (She doesn’t say which.) Thomas, 27, also recently competed in the Miss District of Columbia pageant as Miss Penn Quarter and is planning to start apodcast on politics and culture soon. She’s not a big poster or party person, but she does see the value in trying to influence politics through culture. One thing the GOP needs, in her view: more Black surrogates making the case for their party anywhere a camera is pointing, the way Symone Sanders or Al Sharpton frequently appear on MSNBC. “They don’t shut up. And they never go away. And Republicans need to be doing that,” she told us later.

Thomas grew up in what she describes as a liberal family in Fort Mill,South Carolina, but her views shifted as she read up on Black political thought at the University of South Carolina. She was struck by Malcolm X’s admonitions about two-faced White liberals — that they can pretend to be allies to Black people but at the end of the day are seeking power just like conservatives.

“At least with Republicans,” Thomas said, “you know what you’re getting.”

Like Pearson, Thomas and DuRousseau see Trump’s gains with Black voters — 15 percent in 2024, up from 8 percent in 2020, according to a study by the Pew Research Center — as a potential turning point for Republicans. DuRousseau says he believes that people in the Black community have been “brainwashed” to think that they must support the left. Barack Obama, Thomas says, “made the chokehold even tighter.” But with rappers like Soulja Boy coming out and performing at conservative events, DuRousseau thinks more like-minded Black people will feel encouraged to join the party, so to speak. “It’s simply a domino effect,” he says.

In this version of the story of the Trump 2.0 coalition, Pearson and his pals are not just savvy young politicos partying on the dime of a tech company. They are the vanguard of a new GOP — a party that managed, at least this past November, to pull out of its demographic death spiral by appealing to a younger, less monochromatic generation of Americans.

Right-wing political commentator Dom Lucre attends the “Cruel Kids Summer” party.
A partygoer and his eyewear.

Thomas, left, with conservative content creators Jasmine Woodson and Xaviaer DuRousseau at Pearson’s party.

“They’re showing people that being a young conservative doesn’t just mean you’re out in the middle of the country, like, working on a cornfield,” says Annemarie Wiley, a former cast member on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” who now makes conservative content.

“We’ve got to build a tent,” Pearson says several days before the party, over lemonade at Ned’s Club, a swank downtown spot where he is a member, “because there are no more White voters for us to get.” Before MAGA came along, he explained, “it was a faux pas” to identify as Republican. “It was cheugy. It wasn’t fun. And I think that we’re doing all we can to rework that narrative and rebrand it.” (Did we mention he’s a consultant?)

“It was cool to vote for Obama in 2008. It was really cool to vote for that guy,” says Harry Sisson, a Democratic content creator who frequently spars with Pearson online. “It was cool to vote for Biden in 2020, and Republicans have, unfortunately, I think, swung that back to them.”

Raven Schwam-Curtis, a Chicago-based creator who was part of a cadre of influencers attending the Democratic National Convention last year, sees figures like DuRousseau and Pearson as using the subversiveness of being Black and Republican to position themselves as the new cool kids. “What they’re doing is the equivalent of ‘We’re not like the other girls,’” she says, making it clear she’s opposed to their message. “It’s essentially a rebranding of the hipster thing: ‘Most Black people vote for Democrats, but I’m voting for Republicans, and here’s why you should listen to my deviation from the norm, because, actually, you’ve been duped.’”

At 4:12 p.m., Soulja Boy, wearing a white Polo Ralph Lauren jacket, emerged to his 2008 hit “Turn My Swag On.” Other Pearson bashes have featured Waka Flocka Flame, who posted in support of Trump for president during the campaign, and Kodak Black, whose nearly four-year prison sentence Trump commuted in 2021. Soulja Boy was wearing sunglasses and holding what looked like a thick blunt between his fingers. It was not his first rodeo in Trump’s Washington. The rapper, now in his mid-30s, performed at the Crypto Ball over inauguration weekend. Afterward, he explained that the organizers paid him “a bag” and remarked that Trump, unlike Obama or Kamala Harris, put money in his pockets.

Soulja Boy didn’t make any political statements, and he didn’t respond to a shouted question about his feelings on MAGA. What he did do was perform “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” while Thomas, DuRousseau and Pearson (who was 4 years old when the song came out) danced along with their other friends. (Most of the other guests did not Crank That.)Later, having done his job and presumably gotten his bag — Pearson wouldn’t share Soulja Boy’s fee, citing a nondisclosure agreement — the rapper departed the gig wearing a white “Make America Party Again” hat.

In national politics, Black conservatives have “the hardest line to walk,” says Jennifer DeCasper, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. A former longtime aide to Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina), DeCasper hired Thomas to Scott’s short-lived 2024 presidential campaign and became a mentor. DeCasper hasn’t been to one of Pearson’s parties — “I probably have never been invited because I’m too old, frankly, and not cool enough,” she said in an interview — but she does seem to understand the need to undo the stigma of belonging to a supposedly White party. “No Black person wants to lose their Black card, right?” she said. “When we get pushback from our brothers and sisters, it hurts. Even if we think the policy that we are advocating for is correct, we don’t want to lose our Black cards.”

Thomas remembers being “in tears” after Trump, speaking at a conference of Black journalists during the campaign, suggested that Harris was using her racial identity in an opportunistic way — that his Democratic opponent suddenly “made a turn” and “became a Black person” after she spent years promoting her Indian heritage, in his words. “And you know what?” Thomas said, “I went on TV the next morning and I defended it, because he didn’t say nothing that Black Twitter ain’t been saying. … He gets the culture.”

Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris with stronger-than-usual support from non-White voters. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

What kind of culture is Trump promoting with his policies, now that he’s back in office? While Trump has signed executive orders supporting HBCUs and establishing a White House initiative on those institutions, his Education Department has targeted colleges that engage in diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The administration has sought to wipe those initiatives from every other corner of the federal government, too, and it has ended temporary legal protections for immigrants from Haiti and Cameroon. At the Justice Department, the civil rights division has shifted from combating racial discrimination against minorities to combating “woke ideology.” The White House has ordered a sweeping review of eight museums, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and last month the president criticized the Smithsonian for focusing too much on “how bad Slavery was.”

DuRousseau has some notes for his fellow conservatives. “Calling everything DEI: That needs to go,” he said. He pointed to an episode earlier this year, when an article about Jackie Robinson’s military service briefly disappeared from a Defense Department website amid a purge of content promoting DEI. Questioning the success of every hardworking Black person, he said, “just feels racist at that point.”

The “Cruel Kids Summer” party was named as an ironic allusion to a magazine headline from earlier this year.

A week after the party, Pearson, DuRousseau and Thomas all spoke at a conference for Black conservatives — which Thomas helped organize — at a Hilton in Alexandria, Virginia. There were fewer people in the ballroom than there had been at the loft, but enthusiasm for the Trump presidency was high. Various panelists cheered the administration’s willingness to consider reclassifying marijuana as less dangerous than other drugs at the federal level. Some warned about the danger of contraband vapes from China proliferating among Black youths. A formerly incarcerated man spoke with gratitude for the “opportunity” to be confined at a private prison owned by one of the conference’s sponsors.

Pearson came onstage for a “fireside chat” about “Gen Z and the age of influencers.” He had good news for his fellow Black conservatives.

“I’ve never seen so many celebrities who are so vocal about being pro-Trump and being Republican. You know, folks like Waka Flocka, Kodak Black, Soulja Boy,” he said, name-checking rappers that have performed at his own parties. (Soulja Boy’s publicist told us that the rapper supports Trump as he would support any president but is not a political person.) “… And so I think we’ve got to embrace culture. We got to reach America’s young people where they are, because our message is a winning message, but the only way that we’re actually going to get that message in front of them is if we actually send it their way.”

He thinks he’s helping with that. In August, Pearson launched Right Influence, a company that will work with conservative content creators. He says his group is working with MAGA-world clients such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Conservation Coalition and Rep. John James (R), a Michigan gubernatorial candidate. As for his own political future, Pearson may end up seeking a more traditional path of influence in Washington. “In three years, I’ll be 26,” he told us. “So that would be 20 — that’s 2028. So that’s a presidential election year. That’s also the earliest I could run for Congress.”

By his count, more than 450 people came to the “Cruel Kids Summer” party — even if Patel, the FBI director, did not end up showing. Pearson would like to host more of them in the future — his dream musical guest is Drake — but the only thing the event really reinforced, he said, is that he wants his future wife to plan their whole wedding. “I just want input on the guest list,” he said. “That’s all I need.” (He is single.)

All the Republicans need is for their newest guests to keep showing up to the party. And maybe also to bring a plus-one.

Jay Harold, 25, attends the July party.

A partygoer enjoys some McDonald’s.

From February to August, Pew clocked a small downturn in Trump’s support among Black Americans, and the future of the Trump coalition without Trump remains a question. But Pearson’s July bash had at least one person who was considering her feelings about MAGA, sitting near the exit.

Jaylen Isaac, a 27-year-old teacher in D.C., found out about Pearson’s party through her friends. She’s a liberal — the Democrats were all she knew growing up, she said — but she doesn’t want to base her political choices just on old traditions. Parties like Pearson’s were more realistic about whom they were catering to, she said. On a table in the kitchen, spilled-over french fries surrounded a mound of leftover McDonald’s burgers sitting in their wrappers. “They know that we like McDonald’s,” Isaac said. “They know that we like beer. They know that we like Drake.”

Republicans knew how to have fun without making people feel like misfits, she said.

“When you’re seeing people that you usually don’t see at certain parties,” she said, “it’s like, maybe things aren’t so bad, and maybe we are being blinded, and we need to actually come out and see what’s really going on.”

Dylan Wells contributed to this report.

CORRECTION. A previous version of this article incorrectly said that political consultant and conservative influencer CJ Pearson graduated from the University of Alabama. He left before graduating.



By Jesús RodríguezJesús Rodríguez is a political reporter in The Washington Post's Style section, with a focus on features and profiles.follow on Xjesusrodriguezb