BEYONCÉ

HAVING PROBLEMS IS THE HUMAN CONDITION. BUT there is a particular complication that comes with being black in America. “Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question,” W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in his classic The Souls of Black Folk. “How does it feel to be a problem?” In 2016, Beyoncé, a pop star, chose to be a problem.

This could not have been a light decision. An artist who rose to fame in the late 1990s as lead singer of the teen girl group Destiny’s Child, she has since rocketed to the sort of first-name-only global superstardom that theoretically relieves her of the heaviest burdens of being a problem. Her brand seemed carefully crafted to speak to girl power more than to black power. Four years ago, sociologist Ellis Cashmore identified Beyoncé as “beyond black,” describing her flamboyant individualism as a commodity sold to Middle America as evidence the nation’s racial dilemma had ended. So much for that.

With Lemonade—an album, an Emmy-nominated film and, as America looked