I wrote this half a decade ago…. please see the companion piece on “Michael Jackson and the American Imagination.”
Thinking,
Hoping the best for his family,
F
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You were my first. Back when the other kids were swaying to nursery rhymes, I wanted to rock with you. I had everything I needed — a portable stereo and an album of you singing with the Jackson Five. According to my mother, I would drag around my little stereo, and I would put you on, and I would dance. Nothing else in the world could have made me happier.
I remember you. Your lips were full and your nose was wide and your face was brown. This only rates mentioning because it is no longer true, so untrue, in fact, that sometimes I wonder if I imagined you as you once were. I’m sure at night, as a child, I dreamed of the boy with the afro who sang and spun on his heels like a miniature James Brown.
I wish that boy had become a man. That wish seemed reasonable all the way through “Off the Wall,” when your nose grew narrower and hair more lank, but you were still visibly black. With every subsequent album your relationship to your original appearance grew fainter and fainter, until you were no longer even an echo of yourself. But the further you fled from black masculinity, the more international crowds lionized you. Today you are a grotesque.
And an alleged child molester — that too? If we can believe what we see in the camera lens — that this pale alien being (recently parodied in “Scary Movie 3″) was once cute little Michael — then we can believe anything. The danger for us is that we will judge you by your appearance. The danger for you is that you have set up a situation, with your reckless behavior around your own children and others’, that we cannot help but judge.
In his book The Hip Hop Generation,” Bakari Kitwana relentlessly outlines America’s broken promise to black males. Mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines and unbalanced enforcement of drug laws have helped make prison a waystation or home for many more black men than white. In Los Angeles and Cincinnati, frustrated youth up-end their own neighborhoods to draw attention to police brutality. The global economy undermines the fortunes of lower-skilled workers, many of them African-Americans. The military, in many cases, remains the only way out.
This social warfare has hardened many black men, aiding and abetting the culture of hypermasculinity that permeates hip hop. It’s hard to be a sister and be down with the bitch/’ho lyrics, hard to be down with men who spout rhymes full of anti-female fury. Commercial hip hop may appeal to young women who can pretend that the men are calling out someone else, but to an older head like myself it sounds as if they are speaking my name. I cannot listen to it. I cannot dance.
But I long to take the floor with the same childish glee that I did when you and I were together. I desperately want you to be there for me, to reassure me that things aren’t so bad that the primary options open to black men are hatred of black women or physical and mental disintegration. I would like to think that you, the shadow Michael who never had a chance to grow up, wouldn’t treat me the way those other men do. But I’m the furthest thing from your mind.
In your absence, the absence of a Michael I can relate to, I have only questions. Why does America destroy and pervert black men? Were you squeezed between racism and perfectionism until your very soul compressed? And what about those without your millions of dollars? What options are left for them?
I feel — and I know it cannot be true, for I still breathe — that if you cannot exist, I cannot exist. If there is no room for a loving black masculinity in the world, I fear there is little room for the black feminine as well. You, Michael Jackson, are not all black men, and for that I am grateful. But your decline says more about America than we can bear to hear.
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Farai Chideya’s new novel Kiss the Sky, is about a black rock star struggling with fame. She is the founder of PopandPolitics.com.
This was posted on Alternet.org on November 26, 2003.
Tags: childhood, king of pop, memory, michael jackson, race
I WISH I COULD HAVE MEET MICHAEL, WHEN I WAS 16 THE MUSIC THAT HE SANG JUST MADE THE DAYS SO SWEET. I JUST LOVE TO LEASEN TO HIM SING. I WAS BORN 1963 AND HIS MUSIC WAS THE BEST. I ALWAYS WISHED I HAD A TICKET TO THE SHOW, BUT NOW I
FELL THAT IM SPECIAL BECAUSE IM LETTING SOMEONE KNOW HOW MUCH THAT I LOVED HIS MUSIC. MY HEART GOES OUT TO THE
FAMILY AND HIS KIDS. I HOPE ONE DAY THAT THE FAMILY WILL READ THS. I HOPE I HEAR FROM SOMEONE. MICHAEL WAS GREAT XOXO
[...] in 2003, I wrote a piece asking what happened to the brownskinned boy who stole my heart and those of girls my age across the world. Why did he shed his color, and the [...]
Moon Walk on Your Grave
A life begun in stardom,
now, ending up in shame.
Relentless media, cruel world,
who then is there to blame.
A sadness inside,
no tears on your face.
The pain all but over,
mass confusion erase.
In wonder we watch,
can a life be explained?
Can’t surface your agony,
under facade you remained.
Let’s focus on the talent,
musical joy that you gave.
In peace now I pray,
moon walk on your grave.
Michael Jackson call me cell phone number is 978 – 08- 11
michael jackson i love you
Michael, I know you are alive! I know you read every day thousands of letters but off course not everyone because it’s impossible, maybe… But I want so much you to read my letter…
I’m so proud of you, admire and love you… I can’t say how much, Michael! This news from 25 of June was so shocked, difficult for me and unbelievable that I didn’t trust in it for 2 days… I don’t want to write how I was living first week after that… just try to imagine… Because you’re all…You’re the world, Michael…
When I was watching a ceremony in 7-th of July, I used to think that all hopes and support in life was gone with you… Oh God, I really didn’t understand how to get a calm. On the next day we got some news which said that you are alive!!! Oh, God, I could die from that great news!!! And after (and now) we began to get more and more information. And very soon we were sure that it is truth! Now it is just difficult to wait, what we can’t do any more…But you were waiting, so we will wait for you as much as it should be.
But the most difficult was that I couldn’t forgive, and still can’t, everyone who made wound you, accused you and hurt. How could they do it?!! Michael, how?! You always gave world piece, happiness, help and belief in future! Your songs it is a little piece of YOU! But these songs from God – from you! You’re so fool inside – fool of love, kindness, respect, power of word – you’re so rich inside, Michael! How many envy people have, how many anger and hostile inside them! It is so scary! How can you suffer all that around you?!
I just can’t imagine your life… Every year, every day, hour, minute cameras are starring on you, paparazzi make unbelievable sensations…You’re so along, Michael… My heard can’t suffer it… I’m so sympathizing you… And the most pity that I can’t help you… I pray for you… I write poems about you, in which I say how much you mean for world and for me…
I think about why did you do that escape… It was the last chance for something, maybe… You have paid a great deal of yourself for this… You always make a fairytale for us… And this is the most incredible! Even with pain at the beginning… But after…. – you are a genius, Michael!!!
I see the dreams at night – I know that this time when you’re hiding from world is very difficult for you. You worry about your beautiful little children, about people who love you. And you are scaring… Please, remember that we are with you! We are waiting for you, we need you, we love you…
I want to ask you sorry me for my mistakes and bad English. I’m from little Ukraine (Europe) and I’m living in the capital of country. We are preparing a little concert for you to 29-th of August. We organized a group of your fans and learned the most famous of your dancing*) We copied you from video and will dance on the main square of town with the translation on TV to your honor and birth day, to say for all country one more time that you are alive and we are waiting for you!!!
Every day we find more and more facts said you are alive!
Michael, when you come back, if you will give the concert, I don’t know how but I’ll come… I so want it, I dream about that… I just want to realize that I was near you some minutes of my life… I hope I’ll see you, hear you… I want to see your beautiful arms… You have so beautiful arms, Michael…Your voice…your angel voice, which makes me want to live! Oh, how I want to hear it in real…
I don’t know what to say more… I always cry when I watching video with you or read your books… I want to talk with you… I dream that you are my friend… Oh, why it will never be truth?…
Please, be strong, Michael! I pray for you! Love you! I am with you!…
I will newer leave your part,
You are always in my heard….
yankovskayavaleriya@gmail.com
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