The CMA Is Accused Of Removing Clips Of Beyonce's Performance After Racist Backlash

On Wednesday night (Nov. 2), Beyonce made a surprise appearance at the Country Music Association Awards show, performing "Daddy Lessons," a song off Lemonade, alongside the three women of the Dixie Chicks. Their "Daddy Lessons" rendition was surely one of the main takeaways of the night, though as of yesterday evening, there was no mention of the performance from the CMA's social media accounts. It was also discovered that the CMA deleted a promotional clip involving Beyonce before the broadcast. 

Now that major outlets have begun reporting on the CMA's seeming attempt to ignore Beyonce and the Dixie Chicks' performance on its yearly award show, the company has now begun to include photos of all of the women along with its social media posts. According to sources close to the CMA, those who run the accounts had removed the posts in response to an abundance of racist and vitriolic comments, reports TMZ. Many of the commenters seemed to address Beyonce and the Dixie Chicks' mutual support of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as what they perceived as anti-police imagery and content within Beyonce's Lemonade visual album. 

The CMA wrote a statement to USA TODAY admitting to the removal of a promo clip of Beyonce and the Dixie Chicks, but no mention was made of its lack of promotion of the "Daddy Lessons" performance since the broadcast. 

The CMA "has not erased any mentions of Beyoncé's performance on the CMA Awards," read the statement. "In advance of the broadcast, CMA removed a five-second promotional clip from ABC.com and CMA's Facebook page. The promo was unapproved and CMA removed it prior to the broadcast."

"Fans get kind of passionate, read other things into it." said Sarah Trahern, chief executive of the CMA, to The New York Times in response to the deleted promotional clip, and she went on to say that the particular clip was removed at the request of Beyonce's camp. 

The Dixie Chicks have responded to the developing story with a message intended to stand up against the racist rhetoric that seems to be responsible for the CMA's censorship of the "Daddy Lessons" performance. The group posted a stream of their official remix of "Daddy Lessons," which went live yesterday, and wrote, "If we all turn this up really loud, together we can drown out the hate."