On Michael Jackson: Blackness and 'pigment-ocracy'

So many millions of words have been written about Michael Jackson (MJ) over the past 10 days, most of which I confess I have avoided. However, I feel compelled to respond to a recent post by Blackman Vision (BMV) – 'Michael Jackson did not want to be white'. The post draws on a chapter 'Monster Metaphors: Notes on Michael Jackson' by Kobena Mercer in 'Welcome to the Jungle' and on the politics of 'pigment-ocracy'.

Mercer explores the idea that Michael Jackson changed his skin colour not to be white, but to be a light-skinned black man. Jackson's whole remodelling of his hair, face and skin was to make him more lovable and marketable to a wider audience. Did Jackson believe it was easier to sell himself more successfully as ethnically androgynous than ethnically unambiguous to a global pop audience? The pop charts are not usually dominated by dark-skinned black men.

BMV goes on to say that those who believe that MJ was trying to be white are missing the point and fail to understand the politics of pigment-ocracy within the African diaspora whereby the desire is not to be white but to be light. She also comments on MJ's move towards an androgynous gender, which raises its own particular challenges in the largely 'plastic hyper-masculinity' which exists in the African-American and Afro-Caribbean family. While I believe both these points to be true, my response is to the former, for which I feel there is the need for a deeper reading.

What are the signs of blackness? Is skin colour sufficient, or do we, as Bell Hooks writes in 'Reel to Reel', need to look beyond that to political (and cultural) consciousness? Quoting filmmaker Issac Julien, she writes:

'Blackness as a sign is never enough. What does the black subject do, how does it act, how does it think politically … being black isn't really good enough for me. I want to know what your cultural politics are.'

Although here Julien is speaking about 'radical representations of black subjectivities' in film, I am comfortable in using this to examine the meaning of MJ's transformation from black to light. If we take political and cultural consciousness as one of the 'signs of blackness', where then does this leave MJ's slow physical transformation? Such a transformation, because it was always juxtaposed against dance moves and music wholly rooted in the black American musical tradition, speaks to the complexity of race and representation. How does political consciousness work side-by-side when feeding into pigment-ocracy and the desire to be light-skinned and delete one's black features?

BMV makes the point that MJ's father, Joe Jackson, told him he was ugly with a big nose and that he was also teased by his brothers. This abuse, together with the physical punishment he experienced, must have had an affect on MJ. Absolutely, I am sure it did. But how many black kids at home and in the playground have not had similar experiences of growing up with parental and peer jokes and slurs about their skin tone and features, having to deal with internalised racism in a wash of whiteness? If we are truthful the abuse is everywhere – too 'black' or too 'light'. We all have the choice of feeding into these racisms or of refusing to. MJ in particular as a 'star' of immense talent and success was in a far better position to overcome the politics of colour than most others. I don't accept that remaining his original self would have impacted on his success. By the time 'Off The Wall' was released in 1979 he was already heading for the pinnacle of stardom. Are we saying that musically the album Thriller (released 1983) was not sufficient to raise him above his peers, past and present, and that he had to remodel himself to become 'more lovable and marketable' to a wider audience'?

MJ made a personal choice and I am not prepared to make judgment or cast any slur on the choices he made as to the degree of his blackness. I believe them to be entirely personal – we alone define ourselves, how we perceive our bodies and our heritage. In 'Cultural Identity and Diaspora', Stuart Hall argues that there are two kinds of cultural identity. The first is the identity of being, which is part of a belonging to a shared identity, a 'collective "one true self", hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed "selves"', which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common.

The second type of identity is the identity of becoming, an identity of the future. While recognising our similarities as in an identity of being, the identity of becoming relates to the 'critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute "what we really are"; or rather – since history has intervened – "what we have become".'

The point of Hall's argument is that it is only from the 'second position' of identity as an expression of discontinuity that we can begin to understand 'the traumatic character' of the colonial experience. In this instance, this is the transformation of MJ from being black/black to black/light but always remaining a black man – a fusion of the 'being' and the 'becoming'. Michael Jackson – RIP!

* Sokari Ekine blogs at Black Looks.
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