Is the Super Bowl halftime show racist?

In the 2020's it would seem they are going out of their way to eliminate white artists from the show.

Billboards top artists of 2025

So a bit of math. There have been 28 artists listed as performing during the 2020's during the Super Bowl halftime show. This includes the headliners as well as the special guests. A handful of those 28 artists are listed as playing in multiple years, including Bad Bunny who appeared this year as a headliner in 2026 after previously appearing as a guest in 2020 when Shakira and Lopez headlined the all Hispanic/Latin theme.

Of those 28 artists, exactly two have been white. Eminem headlined with Dr Dre, Snoop, Blige, and Lamar, in the 2022 rap themed performance. This year, Lady Gaga was a special guest along with Ricky Martin. Otherwise, there has been no other white artists in what has now been the seventh show of the 2020s. So basically the American Super Bowl has found it in it's heart to include 7% white artists during the 2020s halftime shows. I am pretty sure that is not an accurate portrayal of white people as football fans, nor white people in the music industry.

I took a look at the Billboard charts for 2025 to see who was really hot over the past year. I understand that Bad Bunny is ripping it up with his streaming and kudos to him. Billboard has him listed as number seven in total sales, which is an accomplishment for anyone. I also hear that he is winning Grammys like they are coming out of his ass. But twelve of the top twenty artists are white, and as you can see from the image up on the page, three of the top four artists are white, including Country artist Morgan Wallen at number one. If you add in some country adjacent artists like Post Malone and Teddy Swims there seems like there would be enough star power to have a show with some sort of country feel, which seems like it might play well to the actual NFL base. But it would not play well in certain political circles.

So rather than have any sort of country or even pop type show, we have seen either Latin, Rap/Hip Hop, or R&B shows for seven years running. Now I am sure people will argue that prior to that, we had bands like Coldplay and Maroon Five and artists like Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga. They may even argue that the Super Bowl halftime shows were white-centric even as Beyonce and Bruno Mars had their years in the 2010s. Some of the biggest half time shows were mainstream black artists like Michael Jackson and Prince and was because they were simply mainstream large. There was no backlash to those types of artists. We also had Motown shows and at least one Gloria Estefan Latin themed half time show. But those were not every... single... year.

Meanwhile, is this helping the game? While the gross number of people watching the Super Bowl increase almost every year, the "ratings" base on numerous factors peaked in the early 80s back when San Francisco was the team to beat. Moreover, it would seem like the Super Bowl itself lives on as an event, even as the NFL as a general rule does not see the same ratings it once did. They seem disinterested in keeping the same core audience they thrived with, and appear to want to find a new younger and I guess less white audience to carry them to the future glory years. Good luck convincing all of those Bad Bunny followers that American football is the real game of football and they should convert over from that silly football they play.