Repost from CNN
Michael Jackson on race – and who he saw in the mirror
by Carmen Van Kerckhove, originally published at CNN.com
I got a call yesterday morning from a radio show producer asking if I thought it hypocritical for African-Americans to celebrate Michael Jackson as a black man, since it seems to many people that he spent most of his life turning himself white.
She stopped short of calling Jackson a race traitor, but the implication was clear. And it did get me thinking about the strange role that race played — and didn’t play — in Jackson’s life and career.
Race is never simple, especially when it comes to a complex artist like Michael Jackson.
Jackson often expressed in his music a hopefulness — “It don’t matter if you’re black or white” — about race relations that many found naïve. And yet had no qualms about using anti-Semitic lyrics in his song “They Don’t Care About Us” — “Jew me/Sue me/Everybody do me/Kick me/Kike me.”
We will never know what drove Jackson to alter his appearance so drastically during his adult life. Jackson said that he suffered from vitiligo, a condition that eliminates pigment from skin leaving white blotches. His dermatologist and others close to Jackson, including Deepak Chopra, have also said he had vitiligo, even though many people have expressed doubt about it, fueling debate over whether Jackson was “trying to be white.”
But what about the plastic surgery, the nose, the hair, and other obviously altered aspects of his appearance? On our blog Racialicious, Readers have been speculating about whether he was driven by internalized racism or something else: an extreme form of artistic expression, an obsessive desire to fix one’s appearance called “body dysmorphic disorder,” or a desire to erase any resemblance to Joe Jackson, his abusive father.
One of the best insights we have into Jackson’s emotional life is a television interview he did with Oprah Winfrey in 1993. He admitted then to being a perfectionist and added, “I’m never pleased with myself. No, I try not to look in the mirror.”
Whatever drove this apparent self-loathing, I don’t believe we can separate race from the equation. Race cannot be separated with precision from body dysmorphic disorder, hatred of his tyrannical father, or any potentially relevant theory being discussed right now.
Why?
Because if he hated his body, he was hating a black man’s body. If he hated his father, he was hating a black man. Race ran through it all; we cannot and should not dismiss its effect. Continue Reading »
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This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 11:28 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on July 6, 2009 at 5:31 pm derrick wrote:
Skin color should not matter but unfortunatly it does. i believe michael had a skin condition and body images due to the abuse he suffered from his father. he was not trying to be white. he was trying to even his skin out so that you won’t see the patches. racism does exist in all aspects of our society and it’s sad but true that research shows that the lighter complected you are the more successful you’ll be in society. we have made progress but we still have work to do. michael is an icon for everyone. the sad thing is that people waited tell he died to give him the respect he deserves. they should of done this when he was alive.
derrick
on July 7, 2009 at 4:59 pm Danielle wrote:
I agree that Michael Jackson deserved respect for all of his achievements. He was obviously immensely talented. He is difficult to pin down, though. It does seem rather contradicatory to claim to be proud of one’s “race” while lightening one’s skin at the same time. I agree with Derek that it’s a shame that having lighter skin makes it easier to be successful. To be light complexioned is to begin life with a marked advantage.
on July 10, 2009 at 11:01 am Sarah wrote:
I agree with Danielle’s comment that Michael should received respect for his achievements. He was one of the bestselling artists of all time and “Thriller” is considered a musical masterpiece. I believe that due to his abusive childhood, he developed many psychological problems – including perhaps body dysmorphic disorder (where one sees flaws that really don’t exist). Maybe this is why his vitalagio (spelling may be incorrect, sorry) treatments reached the extreme that they did. I don’t believe this made him more or less successful, but in the case of Michael Jackson, it did cause some fans to distance themselves. Regardless of how people feel about his personal life, he is still an American icon and amazingly talented artist.