Look, I can empathize with much of this critique, but a handful of things leap out at me:

1) Black people use taboo language to describe ourselves all the time (members of other subordinate groups do the same, but I'll stick with what I know best). Creole? Negro? We still use that other n-word. Bey's referring to herself; it is the height of my problem with modern pseudo-liberalism that the author felt comfortable challenging her on the language she uses to do so. Let the woman identify how she chooses; she's not putting the label on anyone else and she's not accountable to anyone else for the political salience of her self-descriptors.

2) Beyoncé is a recording artist and media mogul. Why shouldn't her efforts be more about profit than politics? It'd be nice if she used her pulpit to speak more about what's been going on lately - especially since most of her revenue comes from white fans.  (This is true of all chart-topping Black artists; cf. "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" which all lovers of Black music in general and hip-hop in particular should see.) But even the author observes that she's been busy putting her money where her heart is behind the scenes. If she had been doing all of the speaking out and none of the bailing out, Black folk would be saying "Yeah, but the proof is in the pudding; what have you done for us lately?" Can't win for losin', as my momma says.

Ultimately, even our most public figures have the right not to take up the call to Speak for All [Insert Oppressed Group Here]. We as fans and fellow Black people get to say "I think you could do more and it'd help; you're in a position to do great good."  We do not, however, have the right to expect those contributions and to deride those who don't cough up.  Those of us who are routinely subjected to this particular injustice of tokenism would be exhibiting the basest of hypocrisy to take a burden we don't want on our shoulders and attempt to place it on anyone else's.

(How often have we lamented having to respond to "Why do Black people ____?" and "Is it okay if I, as a non-Black person, ____?" and "Help me understand _____."  If you're like me, you do it anyway, because increasing the amount of understanding is a good thing...but that doesn't make it any less burdensome and nobody has the right to expect it of us.  If I didn't feel like being the Black Explainer one day, not a single one of my friends - Black or otherwise - would object.  Lucky me, I guess.)

• You can't talk about or use imagery related to 9/11 unless you survived the towers dropping on your head, got covered in brick dust, and/or lost someone you loved in NYC or at the Pentagon.
• You should never ask New Yorkers where they were on 9/11.
• Artistic expressions related to 9/11 are the exclusive province of immediate survivors of 9/11.

All of this is ridiculous. You can't "appropriate" national tragedy the way you do culture.  I recently read research that found symptoms of post-traumatic stress in non-New York residents who were no more directly impacted by 9/11 than the average ("I watched the events unfold on television") up to 6 months following the attacks.  The number one predictor of how much stress a study participant experienced?  Not proximity to the event; it was how she coped in the weeks afterward.  The lesson: national tragedy is literally traumatic to everyone in the nation.  To the extent that it wounds us, it belongs to all of us.  We cannot appropriate what is already ours.

I say this not to detract from the reality that those most proximal to Katrina suffered the most grievous harms.  Of course they did.  But we can say both "this hurt me" and "this hurt you way more".

Incidentally, I find it interesting that the author and the people he quotes attack Beyoncé both for use of charged political imagery and from their judgment that "Formation" isn't as much a political statement as most people believe.  Can't have it both ways.

"Formation" was, in any case, more personal than political - the political expression comes as a part of the overall self-identification represented in the rest of the imagery. To attack someone for using their own language and the imagery they choose to say "This is who I am" is unforgivably unjust in my eyes.  It is particularly poignant that this self-righteous rejection comes in the same week that saw Ben Carson tell us that Barack Obama was "raised white" and therefore couldn't represent Us.

Dear Black Journalists: if you're about to begin the title of a piece of yours with "Dear Black America, Stop" anything, do me a favor and check yourselves before you continue.  Because you're probably about to project your attitude onto 43 million people and that should always be done with care.  It should pretty much never be done, but I've got one:

Dear Black America, Stop Telling Black People How to Be Black.

If I was just paranoid or taking things too seriously, I'd have an awfully hard time navigating the world I've lived in my whole life. I'd be overanalyzing every interaction in which a White person in authority challenged or disappointed or rejected me. And I'd be seeing racism in way more places than I presently do.Instead, these years of navigating my very diverse but overwhelmingly White world have trained me up. Enough so that during high school, a peer sidled up to me and asked "Can I ask you a question?" with a precise tone and bearing with which I was so familiar, I responded: "No, you can't say it; yes, we can."

With shocked eyes, he asked how I knew what he was going to ask.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that you're not my friend if you doubt my word, if you tell me to "lighten up" or "stop making everything about race". But don't ever ask for my opinion about something to do with people, don't tell me you trust me, and certainly don't suggest that I'll make a good psychologist.

Because by telling me to lighten up, or to stop playing the race card, you're telling me that you don't trust the perceptual and analytical skills of a lifetime of these experiences, informed by a substantial amount of relevant education. You're telling me I routinely make false attributions when assessing certain behaviors - and that I have never learned how not to do so, despite the opportunities to do so that arise multiple times a day.

How could you trust me to assess the motivations of the guy that hasn't called, or the potential employer in the interview you just had? Clearly, I have such a huge and immutable bias that I have mis-explained much of my interaction with other people throughout my life. I wouldn't trust the assessments of such a one, no matter how funny or chill I thought him.
We can still hang if you don't trust me; I can still call you my friend. But we'll get along better if you *realize* you don't trust me. That way, we can agree: I won't tell you of my experiences, and you won't seek to invalidate them.