I’m Not Gonna Spend My Life Being a Colour
by Lorette C. Luzajic
I’m a black American, I am proud of my race. I am proud of who I am… When people make up stories that I don’t want to be what I am it hurts me.
-Michael Jackson
Newsweek isn’t supposed to be a gossip magazine, but something about Michael Jackson gave free reign to even the most reputable publications to make up whatever they wanted to. After Jackson’s death, author David Gates puppeted tabloid consensus and reported on the superstar’s “profound loathing of blackness.”
Writers like to use words like “simulacrum” and Gates at last had his chance, calling Michael a “simulacrum of a white man,” something he’d apparently achieved through hatred of kinky hair and bleaching of the skin.
Gates did bring up in passing a supposed “skin condition” but he fails to mention how vitiligo turns a black man into the polka dot door. Vitiligo is not always just skin deep, either: it’s an autoimmune condition.
Gates also fails to mention that those straight sleek bobs, those curly ponytails, those unusual hairstyles, are all wigs. I’d bet everything I have that Jackson much preferred the kink in his hair to nothing at all- he’d been virtually bald for over two decades.
The hushed whispers about Michael’s skin bleaching enigma have been with us for as long as I can remember, some 25 years or more. And the condition had begun to manifest itself around Off the Wall. As with so very many of the things, Michael Jackson told us what was going on. But he was so soft-spoken, it barely registered. Even if we heard, we found reason to distrust his word. Perhaps when he said, so quietly we could barely hear, on the “Oprah” show, that he had “vitiligo,” we could have all done some research. And then, perhaps, we could have considered that maybe the man didn’t WANT to look like a giraffe or use two tons of cocoa coloured makeup every day. And neither do the thousands of other people with the condition.
But we were too busy judging a man for the colour of his skin.
Maybe Michael didn’t want to go bald during his sexual prime, forced to wear all manner of wigs until his death. Maybe he didn’t want his obsessive nose surgery to turn out like that, and maybe it wasn’t obsessive- perhaps the surgeon fucked up badly, and Michael suffered the scalpel in hopes of restoring some normalcy to a nose that ruined his face, or worse, his vocal sound. And hasn’t anyone else noticed that half his family members share a version of this nose? What if you’d gotten a nose job when you were young and foolish and then found your voice was wrong?
Maybe he didn’t want to have third degree burns all over his scalp and face and have scalp and facial reconstructive surgery. Did you know how bad that Pepsi burning accident was? Third degree burns to face and scalp. Maybe the plastic surgery obsession happened because half of his head melted off. Maybe Michael Jackson hated what having vitiligo did to him, and hated what had become of his hair, nose, scalp and face. He did, in fact- he was crushed by how “disgusting” he looked, in his own words, like a “lizard.”
Maybe he dealt with it as gracefully as he could. If our self-esteem is battered by a pimple or a bald spot, what would it be with the same issues if we were at the peak of world stardom as a sex symbol?
Some sleazy tabloids just don’t know any better. They’ve never met Michael, and they’re out to make a dollar, same as anyone else. But Quincy Jones helped make Michael Jackson, and knew him intimately. He has no excuse. After Michael’s death, he said he didn’t believe Michael about vitiligo. “I don’t believe in any of that bullshit, no. No. Never. I’ve been around junkies and stuff all my life. I’ve heard every excuse…but it’s bullshit. You’re justifying something that’s destructive to your existence. It’s crazy. I mean, I came up with Ray Charles, man. You know, nobody gonna pull no wool over my eyes. He did heroin twenty years! Come on… It’s ridiculous, man! Chemical peels and all of it. And I don’t understand it. But he obviously didn’t want to be black…Well, what do you think? You see his kids?”
Well- have you seen Quincy Jones’ kids? Or his wives, for that matter? With all due respect, what a pompous arsehole.
One of the reasons that the black press has largely championed Michael is that they HAVEN”T dwelt on the colour of his skin. As a community icon, his accomplishments as an African American usurp any insecurities he may have had. Many black journalists have done their background, and know vitiligo is real.
I certainly hope Jones is cringing now that everyone’s hauled out their scrap albums, circling incidents of Jackson’s spotting effects. Because there it is, glowing under his makeup. Eventually, makeup became too tedious, too faulty. What is vitiligo? It’s a pigment disorder where skin begins to spot and lose pigment in spots. White people get it too, but it’s not as visible, of course. In some people, a few patches lose pigment slowly over time. In other people, the effect is like marble rye. For others still, eventually they have nearly nothing of their original pigment.
For the record, re-pigmentation is nearly impossible, and the rate your skin loses pigment will far supercede the minute amounts you can change back, some fraction of an inches worth per annum. So depigmentation is the only answer. Did anyone ever consider the considerable pain this would cause Michael Jackson? That the vitiligo was not an effect of his condition of hatred, but that the condition itself would cause him emotional pain and identity crises? Did you ever think that maybe he was thrilled to be a black contributor, and deeply wounded to be unable to wear his colour? Did any of those journalists ‘reporting’ his black shame ever for one second consider that maybe, just maybe, Michael didn’t have surgeries and skin bleaching because of his self-esteem problems, but that his self-esteem was injured because he lost half his head and face and went bald when he was already dealing with unsightly pigment blotching?
I would find it very difficult indeed if suddenly I began developing dark brown spots of pigment on my skin, spots which grew unruly and unpredictably. It would do a number on my self-esteem- not because I’m ashamed of my German-Canadian heritage, not because I don’t like black people. Simply because I don’t want to look like a damn Dalmatian dog. Step away momentarily from your judgement and examine yourself. Chances are, you suffer from depression, addiction, bulimia, feelings of poor worth. So what the hell are you doing judging Michael for his lack of self-esteem?
Of course, members of the black community who didn’t know about his conditions and accidents couldn’t consider how that might affect him psychologically, and they would understandably felt betrayed. They worked hard to be represented and admired, to erode racism, and felt Jackson should have been more outspoken about black pride. But I think he was quite outspoken- in word, and in example, working with, traveling to, helping all cultures. A careful examination of his words, thoughts, actions, and art show clearly he loved black people, and all people. Because of tabloid manipulation, Michael was reclusive and didn’t speak at all for over a decade. This period coincides with the aftermath of the Pepsi burning accident. Even the most reputable writers and thinkers were led astray by the tabloid frenzy.
How could anyone forget the old standby scoop about the oxygen chamber? Guess who uses oxygen chambers? Burn victims, that’s who. Oxygen helps speed healing. Michael Jackson slept in an oxygen chamber the way those who suffer from third degree burns do during medical treatment. He also built a burn unit for other victims.
Still we judged. Michael made the best of it. “I’m not gonna spend my life being a colour,” he blasted us in “Black or White” which was dismissed as too little, too late, by the deaf, dumb and blind.
I can’t see inside Michael’s private neurosis. Did he spend as much time worrying about his nose or his leopard print skin as I spend worrying about my varicose veins?
And sure, it’s possible Jackson chose white children because he hated black children. But then, there’s also that slim chance the kids do have his parentage. I think it’s highly unlikely, just like everyone else does. Our nosy minds will be satisfied eventually. Maybe he picked the rumoured doctors, white, simply because he trusted them as friends and longtime champions, colour be damned.
Or maybe he chose not to parent his own children genetically because he did not want to pass the many vicious health problems on to them. Vitiligo, lupus- serious immune system disorders, lung conditions, highly inheritable. It’s also possible that Michael was conscientious enough of the fact that his sperm would be laden with drugs, which he took off and on since the Pepsi incident, to numb the physical and later, the emotional pain.
It’s not that I naively think Jackson had no inner demons. He was crashing emotionally- who wouldn’t under that pressure- when he went berserk blaming Sony and white or Jewish men for his tarnished image. By that point, he was feeling incredibly victimized- he WAS victimized, but perhaps not by the names he was naming. He couldn’t trust even those he trusted most. He was paranoid, cornered, sick, and frightened. He was ridiculed at every turn. I was ridiculed in high school and the scars ran deep. Thankfully, the whole world doesn’t think I’m a child molester even though I’m not. Jackson had to be pretty tough to get through that without putting a gun to his head. He had an unusual sentimentality about children, and then, they, too, betrayed him. That must have hurt terribly. A child he helped save from cancer sold him out for his trash mother- a task the kid had helped her do before, and helped her do again shortly after, by the way.
It was this unending river of pain that set Jackson on a downward spiral. He lived his whole life in tremendous physical and psychological pain. He lived in exhaustion and fear. He lived with broken bones, lung problems, immune system issues- the man was sick for most of his life.
Is it possible that all this, in conjunction with the usual scars of childhood acne and taunting, and the emotional and physical abuse from his father, caused any esteem issues that he had? That they were not fear of the black man? Let’s visit a few facts:
One of the core subjects of home schooling his extremely well educated children was African-American history.
He said in several separate video interviews “I’m a black American and proud of it.”
He said it on “Oprah.”
His idol was James Brown, a black man.
He had many other black idols and mentors. Yes, he did have white friends. He had relationship with people of many ethnicities.
He told Jesse Jackson that he loved African music. “The rhythms of Africans. Which is the roots of rhythm. That’s my favourite music. That’s my favourite music of the world because all music is defined from that. Africa is music. It is the origin. It is the dawn of existence. You can’t avoid that. It is in everything that is about myself.”
He also told Jesse that he could not take credit for the moonwalk, that it was from black kids. “These black children in the ghettos are, they have the most phenomenal rhythm of anybody on the earth. … I get a lot of ideas from watching these black children. They have perfect rhythm. From just riding through Harlem, I remember in the early, you know, late 70’s early 80’s, I would see these kids dancing on the street and I would see these kids doing these, uh sliding backwards kinda like an illusion dancing I call it. I took a mental picture of it. A mental movie of it. I went into my room upstairs in Encino, and I would just start doing the dance, and create and perfect it. But, it definitely started within the black culture.”
He spoke extensively of his love for Africa and traveled it widely, often with his children.
“In my heart, deepest of heart, I really love Africa and I love the people of Africa. That’s why, whenever I get the chance, the children and I, we jump on the plane and fly to Africa and we vacation there. I spend more of my vacation in Africa than in any other country. And ah, we love the people and we love the environment. Topographically, one of the most beautiful places on the surface of the Earth. They never show the sandy white sugar beaches, and it’s there! And they never show the beautiful, you know the landscaping, never show the buildings, the metropolis and urban – Johannesburg, Cape Town, Kenya, ur, you know the Ivory Coast ur, you know, Rwanda, how beautiful the place is! And it’s really stunningly beautiful! And I want to heighten that awareness with what I’m doing and it’s been my dream for many, many years. And everybody around me knows that, because I go there very much…the world is jealous of Africa for many centuries because it’s natural resources is phenomenal. It really is. And it is the dawn of civilization…”
He said the story of Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali, among others, were giving him strength to deal with the trials.
He initiated his own search for his DNA roots, leading him to the Ivory Coast, where he has been Prince Michael since 1992. The Sanwi people in the Krindjabo rainforest honoured Michael as their Prince, later asking Rev. Jesse Jackson to fill his glove. They even had a traditional ceremony for Michael’s funeral, with over 2000 attendees, and two days of ritual dancing, complete with Jackson look-a-likes. Maybe it sounds weird to you. Why? Is it too black? Too African? Why should Michael’s West African fans- his family- not mourn him?
Of course the media vultures made up stuff about “Princess” Michael’s trip. Really bizarre, hateful things like MJ found the African people smelled bad. I mean, how childish can we get here? Turns out eyewitnesses saw differently. “I was impressed with the interaction between Michael and the children. He sat on the bed with children who were deformed and children that were ill… He sat there and talked to them, hugged, cuddled them,” said tour guide Charles Bobbit.
While doing a “concertless” tour of Africa- visiting orphanages, churches, schools, and so on, he received a Medal of Honour from President Omar Bongo of Gabon, a medal that had previously only gone to diplomats and dignitaries like Mandela.
He had a lifelong love of Africa. In 1992, he told Robert E. Johnson of Ebony Magazine about memories of the Jackson Five. “When we came off the plane in [Daka, Senegal] Africa we were greeted by a long line of African dancers. Their drums and sounds filled the air with rhythm. I was going crazy, I was screaming, All right! They got the rhythm… This is it. This is where I come from. The origin.”
In “They Don’t Really Care About Us” he features legions of black and other ethnicity drummers. Musicians, dancers, and hot women in all of his videos span many cultures. (The babes are always skinny- I mean, holy anorexia- but they sure as hell are black.)
In front of millions of people on “Oprah,” Jackson said, “I’m a black American, I am proud of my race. I am proud of who I am… When people make up stories that I don’t want to be what I am it hurts me.”
So why didn’t he tell us he had vitiligo?
He did. On that same program, in front of the whole world, he told us. ”I have a skin disorder that destroys the pigmentation of my skin; it’s something that I cannot help, OK? But when people make up stories that I don’t want to be what I am it hurts me.”
Does all of this sound like a man who is ashamed of the colour of his skin? Maybe it does. Maybe he was ashamed of the mottled, speckled colour, the white colour. Michael was sick. And he’s been telling us all along. But his soft-spoken voice could not be heard above the cacophony of lies.
He was telling us all along, but no one was listening.
1958-2009
This essay is one of over fifty pieces in Goodbye, Billie Jean: the Meaning of Michael Jackson. Click here to see more.
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