But I do think MJ was ashamed of his blackness, very much so, but in that complex way you allude to. The family once commented that if there is something you don't like about yourself why not change it. MJ had the money to go beyond the nose, to the hair, the chin, the eyelids, etc. That said in college I knew a whole bunch of militant black folk in college, yet some of the women still straightened their hair. I never really got that until I look now at the MJ parallel.

Racism is insidious. It infects the victim as much as the oppressor.

I don't claim any insight into Michael Jackson's psyche, and the above sentence may be true...but...if Michael Jackson was going for normal, that was one horribly failed quest.

In the coverage of Jackson's death, I ran across an anecdote from when Michael was 5 or 6 years old. He and his brothers shared a room in the little house in Gary, and someone left the bedroom window open at night. Their father, Joe, climbed through the window in the middle of the night and terrorized the boys. (Was he wearing a mask? I can't remember if this anecdote said he was wearing a mask or not, but that's what I'm picturing -- Joe wearing a scary mask.) The article said that Michael had nightmares *for years* afterward.

Then, shortly after reading that story, I listened to "Thriller." The first line of the song: "They're out to get you." Watch the video. After reading about Joe's nighttime escapade, I see Michael's life -- and the "Thriller" album, especially the title song and video -- in a clearer light. I thought the title song was a novelty tune. It was anything but that for Michael. For him, it was cathartic.

Was Michael rejecting his father's nose when he whittled it down over the years? Was he donning a mask? Was the surgery his way of reasserting control?

It does happen. Watch this clip of a Detroit tv news personality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIyQvcuTJYA

I have nothing to say about Jackson's penchant for plastic surgery, maybe he was trying to create a nose that "looked white". But I do know that those skin bleaching creams contain an ingredient that causes cancer. If Jackson used them in the quantities required to turn his skin completely white he would have been dead fifteen years ago.

The uber-rationalizations of Jackson's fans for his bizarre and disturbing behaviour is going beyond ridiculous.

And while Jackson may well have had vitiglio - although there was nothing about this guy that makes one inclined to simply take what he said at face value (no pun intended) - I've seen lots of men with vitiglio who didn't use it as a departure for trying to look like a white woman.

I do know that as a black person, his continued quest to become lighter and lighter and to make his features -- nose, lips, etc. -- thinner and thinner, adopting the physical features of whiteness, made me very uncomfortable. What was it all about? Was it ethnic/racial hatred? Was he trying to renounce his blackness? These are all questions I continually asked myself -- and will always ask myself -- about Michael Jackson?

At Neverland, Michael also made sure to surround himself with white people. His ex-wives -- Debbie Rowe and Lisa Marie Presley -- were both white. Any women he is known to have dated in the past -- Brooke Shields and Tatum O'Neil -- were also white. Even the little boys that he liked to hang out with were white -- or light Hispanic, in the case of his last accuser. And what puzzles me most of all, is did Michael purposely set out to have "white" children, by selecting white women to bear his offspring? If you have seen these children, IMO, they do not have ANY ethnic features. Was Michael's sperm even involved in their conception? I am not an expert on genetics, so I guess anything is possible but I do look at those children with puzzlement and wonder.

So, I can not completed agree with your view that Michael did not want to be "white." Or, in the very least, have some seriously deep issues surrounding his self-identity and blackness. Whatever his issues, he certainly tried very hard to appear white.

In the end, Mike was an extremely talented individual with a very, very troubled soul.

I said this in a thread the other day, to me, it seems like the only reason to reject that explanation is because it flies in the face of the rather easy pop psychological position that claimed MJ was the ultimate personification of the self-loathing, eager to please black man in a white dominated society.

His father used to tell him he was ugly. The root of it all seems really simple to me.

That said, it simply means something that the most famous man in the world was black and yet, for whatever reason, didn't want to look like it. It is most likely a comment on race as constructed in America, but I don't know that everyone will see it that way automatically. And that means that there is no way to really quantify how young black folks around the world view, subconsciously or otherwise, this behavior. I think that means we have to continue to unpack this issue, respecfully, as I think you are doing here.

What freaks me out is that Jones thought Billie Jean was a weak song and shouldn't be on the album. Michael insisted on keeping it in. Michael had bad judgment in many things, but wow, he made the right call there. Imagine a world in which Billie Jean went unheard, the tape swept up off the cutting room floor and into a trash can.

On Thriller, a few friends of mine went to a 20th anniversary celebration of the thing a few years ago, and they got all kinds of interesting background on the song and, more specifically, the video. Landis was there. So were a bunch of the original dancers, and they performed the zombie number (which I've watched repeatedly over the last few days...incredible). That's where I first heard about it being called Starlight Love, apparently somebody sang a couple of bars. It was apparently a smart change.

While he has stayed pretty close to Black folks in other areas--socially, musically, culturally--facially he fled as far from his youthful looks as possible. Whether that's self-hate on an individual or cultural scale, dunno.

Seriously, American whiteness for a few decades has embraced and sought out the tan and created a space for multi racial folks to climb the popular hotness scale that was not available in Northern europe, the birthplace of whiteness.

I wonder if anyone has any thoughts as to the origins of the dark skinned whitey, and does this have a place in the american discussion on race? Out side of Soul Man, that is.

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendId=214032136

Have you considered that it more likely means you are destined not to know what the hell you are talking about in any definitive sense other than the obvious bromides, biases, rhetorical flourishes, recycled theories and assumptions that you (or I) walked into the room with and it's time to give it a rest ?

Boehner is doing a bad job of it though...

I went to college with several Jewish women who spoke of how it was their "sweet sixteen" present to get their noses done. Sad.

That is a very true statement, but I honestly don't think race had that much to do with it for MJ. As I understand things he really did have vitiligo and the bleaching was so that everything would be one color and he wouldn't have patches.

As for the rest, I'm pretty swayed by the argument that alot of it was just him rejecting everything about his father. The hair was a rejection of the Jackson 5 afro's his father made them wear. The face was a rejection of looking like his father. Also, I understand he had this weird thing with Diana Ross being his ideal of beauty, and it's possible he was trying to move towards that. Then it just kept spiraling out of control until we got the sad figure we saw before his death.

When you take the principles and ideals that MJ stood for in his lyrics, it just doesn't square with the common narrative of a self-hating black man. Like the rest of the planet, I've spent the past few days going back through the catalogue, Jackson 5 to Dangerous, and something that has struck me is that you can see his 'Souls of Black Folks' still shine through even when his skin was lighter than most white people. At least I can. Maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see, but I don't think so.

Like I've said before, everything I've learned about the man leads me to believe he was very proud of blackness and black people. At the same time he rejected any and all limitations or classifications of himself based on race - probably taking this too far, even.

This'll be my last MJ comment, I swear! :) And here's the highlight of my own personal revival of the MJ catalogue. I dare you to watch it without getting at least a little choked up.

John Boehner is actually and oompa-loompa with gigantism.

I loved Mike -- and always will -- I still maintain that he was a seriously troubled indivdual with issues surrounding this racial/ethnic identity...notwithstanding his vitiligo.

I still think of a really good, all-over tan on a white person as a sign of an adolescent or unemployed person. Nobody with a real job can maintain it.

I don't think he liked being Black, but he couldn't get away from it, because it was hardwired into him. It was that Black experience that gave him his musical foundation.

Michael never had a childhood. Make no mistake, Michael would have been an oddity in any Black family of that generation, and you know it. Now, his talent was singing; what if it had been something else. Because we could SEE it as a child, there are some people who are destined for something out of the ordinary. When you see such talent in a child, and it’s actually harnassed – and that’s what Joe Jackson did – the result is what you see. I think of Olympic athletes…the thing is, most of their preparation is done behind the scenes, so that when you finally see them on the world stage, there’s 10-15 years worth of work already poured into them. For Michael Jackson, we SAW those 10-15 years. How can you be normal when you’ve been famous since you were 10?

That’s why Michael could be friends with Elizabeth Taylor, who was what, 12, when she became famous?

It’s a surreal world.

And like Michael, Elizabeth Taylor was the breadwinner for her family too. It’s an odd thing, which is why entertainment usually eats up Child Stars.

The testimonial to Michael’s talent is that he made the transition from child to adult star, something else he had in common with Elizabeth Taylor.

He’s never been to school. Didn’t know what it was to be in class. Never had that socialization. Never did anything you, or I, or 99.9999% of the world has done as a right of passage, even the rich among us has done.

He was trapped by demons created by the world he inhabited.

The man was a deeply talented, uniquely genius of a musician/dancer/producer, and will go down as the most talented entertainer of all time.

Having said that, his life was also a toxic and weird combination of a dysfunctional family, a sadistic and brutalistic father, sexual demons, and sadistic racial self-hatred.

First, growing up Jackson was a curse beyond imagination. No sibling is entirely normal, and all have battle scars from Joe Jackson. Meanwhile, his mother, while the nicest Jackson, was the most meek and forgiving of old-time spouses. How the family would have prospered if Mother Jackson would have fought like a grizzly bear for Michael and her other kids. Joe Jackson's grotesque behavior even extends to Michael's afterlife, with his joking, laughing, and embarassing/shocking behavior at the BET awards. His pimping of a new production company while his son's body lies in a morgue is the height of evil.

Second, while Michael may be forgiven for the above, and is indeed a victim, what he has done to other youngsters is also criminal. Michael was a serial, uncompromising, and absolute harasser of young boys, and while he was lucky that his victims were money-hungry opportunists, it does not make him innocent, just not guilty under the law. For two decades the man slept with boys not related to him, watched porn with them, and engaged in other extremely vulgar and inappropriate behaviors.

Third, Jackson never, ever had a normal adult sexual relationship. Not hetero, not gay, not anything. His tastes were entirely puerile, and thus, entirly repugnant.

Finally, and this is where I disagree with African Americans the most----the man hated being black. He altered his nose, his face, his very skin color, and made himself into a weird, frightening elderly gaunt white female. Vitiligo is treated by making the light skinned affected skin dark, not the other way around. With his shirt off, or when he appeared in that over-exposed video with Lisa Marie, it can be seen that Michael lightened himself ALL OVER.

Further, look at his kids, who don't even share his genetic traits, and are likely not from his seed. Look at the pictures of him from Neverland ranch. Most, if not all, of his co-workers, employees, servants, etc., were white. Both "wives" were white. His lawyers, his confidantes (Tamborelli, et. al) were white. He had little or no relationship with his family, other than his mother.

Michael was a supreme talent that was ultimately wasted in a toxic brew of mental disease, racial self-hatred, financial shenanigans, and sexual disorders. Face it, black America. Michael left you. He wasn't black anymore. He only used black America when he got into trouble with the law or had to go to court. He used black America only when he needed you. Otherwise, you meant little or nothing to him.

In the end though, I cannot help but feel immense sadness for him. Talent wasted and thrown away is the height of tragedy. Joe Jackson needs to go to hell.

That kind of experimenting with identity is also kind of adolescent, though. When I was a teenager, I wanted to be Asian. (I'm actually a Mediterranean-style white person with an angular face and curly hair. I wanted a rounded face and straight hair.) But we're supposed to come to terms with what we are as we grow up. That's a necessity for those of us who can't afford the radical procedures that celebrities can get.

Perpetual adolescence plus unlimited resources almost always ends badly. The details of how Michael Jackson went off the rails undoubtedly have something to do with the details of his life. But he's hardly the first young, rich person to self-destruct spectacularly. It's usually the women who mess with their appearance that much, though. It's odd when a man chooses that particular thing.

I don't know what kind of ego you would have to have to survive the scrutiny and abuse he did growing up but I don't know many people who have it.

Arsenio Hall may have tagged it best: from memory "Michael is a great humanitarian, he's helped thousands, his music is classic, etc etc., but, no matter how you slice it, the Brother is WEIRD!"

Terms of use below says I shouldn't post anything that's 'harassing, defamatory or otherwise objectionable.' I don't think this is. Is there anybody here who doubts he was a pedophile drug addict?

The line about "normal" hit me like a ton of bricks cause I think that's definitely something that a lot of people of color go through. I'm Asian and we talk about semi-regularly. I appreciate that my white friends try to be conscious about race - but there is just something about how they can flow through society so smoothly without much conscious thought about color.

I mean everybody got their own problems and hangups - and major blessings also - but a *constant awareness of race and how it intersects our daily interactions* is something that a lot of minorities think about. And maybe I'm projecting incorrectly, but I don't think that white folks think about it nearly as much.

Fortunately I don't have the inclination (nor the money or flukies) to do anything about it....

Okay. This. Is. Not. True. Or, at least, it wasn't until very recently. Just google it. It's only been in the last several years that medical science has been able to make any progress restoring pigment to skin affected by vitiligo. Prior to this break through (in phototherapy), the only treatment that could restore any unification to the skin was depigmentation. Indeed, even today, for patients with extensive vitiligo (that which covers more than half of their body), for whom repigmentation is ineffective, depigmentation is still an option many of them are willing to take. Further, if a person chooses today (or did in the past) the option of depigmentation, they do so with the understanding that the process is irreversable. Those who choose to go through with it do so to feel whole and normal again.

I'm not telling you whether you should believe he was a race traitor, a self-hating black man, or whatever you want to call it. I'm not black, so I don't have the visceral reaction to the concept you have (i.e. an implicit feeling of being betrayal and rejection), so maybe I'm also not as sensitive to the signs. And while I do think that I understand how you may feel on an intellectual level, my empathy for your perspective doesn't outweigh the sympathy I feel for the MJ of 30 or 35 years ago whose profound self-loathing was, I suspect, a bit more personal and a bit less significant from a socio-political perspective than the one you (and so many others) ascribe to him. Although I fully accept that your conclusions are plausible.

I do share your general feelings with regard to him as a predator. Which makes the whole process of sympathizing with him all the more complicated. I wanted him to be found guilty in 2005. The things he copped to viewed along side the circumstantial evidence of his background as an abused child, his asexual adulthood, his juvenile sense of absolute entitlement and, yeah, his self-mutilation all sort of paint a pretty clear picture to me of a man who was a danger to himself and the people around him, particularly children.

But that's just my take on it. I don't have a dog in the "race traitor" fight. As an outsider, I read a lot of the accusations on those lines as coming from people whose perspective seems clearly skewed by a sense that, were it to be the case, they had been personally wronged, so that, along with the baseless accusations that his vitiligo is an obvious fraud, makes the argument (while plausible) pretty unsatisfying and unpersuasive to me. Obviously, neither of us know the whole truth. You could be right on all counts. I doubt it.

The supposed explanation for the first rhinoplasty is that Michael had a broken nose and was having trouble breathing...which makes NO sense considering that his nose was made surgically NARROWER, hence restricting the nasal passages further, hence further obstructing his airway. I think it far more likely that Michael had developed a complex about his nose after having underwent constant ridicule from his father. The other early cosmetic procedures that went on in the early 80s were about par for the course for entertainers of the era. A little chin work, some work around the eyes, nothing out of bounds for a celebrity. The key to understanding Michael starts with the nose work, IMHO.

However, I do think that he brought a lot of this on himself with his weird 'closeness' to children. Unfortunately in this day and age of child abuse, adults have to protect their reputations against any suggestion of impropriety. MJ just never seemed to understand that!

My personal belief (for what its worth) on some of the topics on this page are this:

MJ did suffer from vitilligo, but would you want to go thru life all blotchy? If you can't dye yourself dark, then he certainly had the money to have proper treatments to even out his color. It just happens that the only color treatment available is white. (Btw, the description of MJs genitals that were given to the police in 1993 were pertaining to the vitilligo blotches)

After the accident that REQUIRED surgery on his nose, I think he just continued with something that made him feel better about himself, especially since his father and brothers tormented him about his nose.

And why would he need to feel better about himself? His changing his appearance TOTALLY is very much in alignment with the behaviour by rape victims, who often dye their hair, cut it off, go from pretty to grunge or other extremes because when THEY look in the mirror, they can still see the victim. They want to see someone else. If MJ was a pedophile or pedarast, I think its because it was probably done to him as a child.

Even if it wasn't, his sense of sex was totally screwed up. Exposed to his brothers having sex in the same room/same bed as him, to his having to keep the secret of his father cheating on his mother with multiple partners at the same time, all at a very tender age, every psychiatrist will agree that this CHANGED his sexual future.

I'm sorry he's gone, but while he was alive, I don't think he could ever be called 'happy'. How sad is that?

http://men.style.com/details/features/landing?id=content_9937

"His ex-wives -- Debbie Rowe and Lisa Marie Presley -- were both white. Any women he is known to have dated in the past -- Brooke Shields and Tatum O'Neil -- were also white."

Like many black men in Holywood but no one ever discusses or questions it. Sidney Poitier and Quincy Jones hate their blackness?

He went through depigmentation to even out his complexion. He tried the makeup thing all throughout his Thriller years but his vitiligo was too severe to keep covered?

Lastly many black celebrities including his sister Janet have gotten nose jobs?

Why are we discuss Michael only?

I am confused about this?

Did you ever stop to think that Joe Jackson suffered from internalized racism?