I was being a little glib when I said we didn’t think of MJ as Black. But, there was a point when many Americans couldn’t (and some still can’t) see beyond race. They saw a Black face and that’s all they saw, not the individual behind the skin. I think Michael Jackson was one of those breakthrough people where, as young kids, we didn’t see “A BLACK KID”, but we saw what we thought was a Cool Kid, an individual. Same with earlier characters like Sydney Poitier, who was one of the first Black men in movies who was not seen just as “A Black Man”, but as a more complex person, a romantic hero, an actor, a complex individual.

I lost interest in him over the years as I had babies and he became famous as a solo artist, later morphing and revealing a self-loathing. Who gets blamed for that? My money’s on his dad and something in Michael we can’t understand. Growing older, I leaned more toward Prince and less toward bubble gum pop songs. So, while I could appreciate the skill behind Billie Jean or Rock With You, the creative genius of Thriller, I didn’t race out to buy the albums, yet I always recognized MJ’s tremendous talent and would tune in to see him dance. As I grew older, I was far more impressed by his ability to recreate in a 10-minute music video what felt like a Hollywood musical than I was into his his actual songs. Still, I know many of the words to his songs.

Michael was a complex, frequently tortured soul which makes it possible he was a pedophile but he could also have been what he said he was, a man trying to regain his childhood living vicariously through children. He admitted to sleeping with a child, not having sex with a child. While I think that was creepy, incredibly creepy, it’s possible all he did was sleep with the child the way a father, mother, or big brother cuddles with a child and that his fascination with children was a fascination with loss.

I know he was accused of horrible things and maybe he did them. It’s hard to defend him in anyway because let’s face, MJ was weird. But I also remember the children from the McMartin pre-school case. When they grew up, they recanted, saying they’d never been molested but were manipulated by paranoid parents and psychologists to say they’d been molested. I say this as a person who’s had to face both a molester and a rapist, who believes we should listen to children’s voices. However, with the big pay-off a parent could get accusing Michael Jackson of anything, it’s possible he settled the case just to make it go away, and the second case came about because a greedy parent bet on how he’d settled the first one. We’ll never know.

I have no substantive comment on his cross-over appeal or his being like MLK or any other Civil Rights leader. However, the analogy in general doesn’t sit well with me because I’ve watched some gangsta rap artists claim the same thing, that they’ve bridged the racial divide. How? Through projecting an image that sticks in the heads of white people and becomes a caricature of the black man or black woman as though we are monolithic?

But if people want to claim MJ, a man who clearly had a crisis in his racial identity, as a figure who could reconcile one group to another, then that’s what he was to them. I’ve always been black and MJ always sang the music I’ve been used to. I have no memory of getting closer to anyone of another race because we both listened to Michael Jackson music. I remember singing Billy Joel with some white kids, not Michael Jackson.

If he is such a figure, then should the credit be given to him or to the man who forced MTV to run his videos, which made MJ the first African-American artist to be played on MTV. Without his appearance on that network, he may not have achieved the level of stardom he did. Somebody kicked a door down for him for the sake of making money, and that gave him the chance to shine, something he’d been doing since he was 3 years old.

I think he was an exceptionally talented entertainer. If his music drew the races closer, then good. If not, he was still a gifted entertainer, much imitated, never repeated. I think he will be studied for years to come in the context of race relations, business skills, talent, and the struggle for identity some African-Americans face in America more than others. At the moment, I think this global mourning has as much to do with the death of an icon as it does to do with people grappling with their own mortality through the loss of someone they feel they knew.

Finally, if white kids don’t see MJ as black, then it’s possible he made no difference at all in matters of race. To be color blind or free of color has nothing to do with the eradication of racism. We have to see people as they are even when they are “the other” and love and respect them just the same.

N.
Michael Jackson’s Message on a Napkin

Lisa, I’m with you on the Osmonds. Donny really has talent. They all have talent. Interesting to see the different outcomes of 2 talented families.

Enjoy the 4th!