Black pride is a major theme in some works of African American popular musicians. Civil Rights Movement era songs such as The Impressions's hit songs "We're a Winner" and "Keep on Pushing" and James Brown's "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud" celebrated black pride. Beyoncé's half-time performance at Super Bowl 50, which included homages to Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, has been described by the media as a display of black pride.
Beauty and fashion
Beauty standards are a major theme of black pride. Black pride was represented in slogans such as "black is beautiful" which challenged white beauty standards. Prior to the black pride movement, the majority of black people straightened their hair or wore wigs. The return to natural hair styles such as the afro, cornrows, and dreadlocks were seen as expressions of black pride. In the 1960s to 1970s, kente cloth and the Black Panthers uniform were worn in the U.S. as expressions of black pride. Headscarves were sometimes worn by Nation of Islam and other Black Muslim Movement members as an expression of black pride and a symbol of faith. Other women used scarves with African prints to cover their hair. Maxine Leeds Craig argues that all-black beauty pageants such as Miss Black America were institutionalized forms of black pride created in response to exclusion from white beauty pageants.
The black pride movement is very prevalent in Brazil, especially throughout the poorer population, and it is found in the Brazilian funk music genre that began arose in the late 1960s, as also in funk carioca, that emerged in the late 1980s. Both the origin of Brazilian funk and funk carioca reflects Brazilian black resistance. Ethnomusicologist George Yúdice states that youths were engaging black culture mediated by a U.S. culture industry met with many arguments against their susceptibility to cultural colonization. Although it borrows some ingredients from hip hop, its style still remains unique to Brazil.
Jamaica
Black pride has been a central theme of the originally Jamaican Rastafari movement since the second half of the 20th century. It has been described as "a rock in the face of expressions of white superiority."
United States
The slogan has been used in the United States by African Americans to celebrate heritage and personal pride. The black pride movement is closely linked with the developments of the civil rights movement and Black Power movement which opposed the conditions of the United States' segregated society, and lobbied for better treatment for people of all races.
