Before I could, I moved on to another paper and he moved on to another career area and I never got the chance to dig more deeply into the rationale behind his words. I more or less put the incident away and thought only dimly of it over the intervening years.
Then, while tuned to the BBC this morning, I listened to a regular program called "World Have Your Say." Authoritative guests along with a host, of course, comment on opinions taken immediately off email, text, and telephone callers the world over. The topic on this day was "Does it matter if Michael Jackson was Black?"
Now, let's ignore, at least for the moment, the whole idea of whether it really matters if it matters if Michael Jackson was Black and just go with the flow, as it were.
The focal point of the discussion was Jamie Foxx's comments at the Black entertainment Awards, ""We want to celebrate this black man. He belongs to us and we shared him with everyone else."
There were the expected responses from more-or-less expected corners, some saying that Jackson's color didn't matter, others saying it mattered a lot, and some saying that they didn't believe that Jackson didn't see himself as a Black man because of all the surgery and skin bleaching he had performed over the years.
One woman who entered a post on the comment's section of the program's website, said, She led her comments by asking, "Oh my goodness? Are you serious? This is the most pressing subject in the world?" and went on to say, ". . . When I hear an entertainer; I don't think wow, that's one great Black entertainer . . ."
Another caller said he not only disagreed with Foxx's comments, on the grounds that they were divisive and, in themselves, racist, but he also disagreed with the whole concept of there being an organization devoted to a particular racial group of artists - or anything else, for that matter.
Immediately, I was taken back to my interview 21 years before.
I think I understand what Foxx was trying to say - that Michael Jackson, because of his talent and his success, should be held up as someone in whom the African American community can take pride and consider a hero, of sorts. And while we can debate the morality of that, in light of the all unproved charges of misconduct with children and, more proven, Jackson's eccentric behavior when it came to his appearance and his habits, it must be admitted that the man was one of the most talented performers, at least of our time, and, although his fortune has dwindled to the point of being in dire debt, there is no doubt he was, at his height, successful to an extent that was amazing.
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