Views of black intellectuals on the legacy of Michael Jackson's monumental career and celebrity are quite varied. They range from lauding Jackson as irreplaceable, inimitable, and godlike to challenging his heroic status and holding him accountable for his excesses.
Below are the opinions of five black thinkers on the impact Jackson had on music, race relations, and Western culture in general.
Dr. Cornell West and Michael Eric Dyson
On the June 30 broadcast of the Tavis Smiley show, professors Dr. Cornell West and Michael Eric Dyson extolled Jackson's musical accomplishments and commended his unwavering commitment to his career. They spoke at length about Jackson's pioneering the way for black recording artists and carrying on the gospel and blues traditions of his heritage.
But while both men were rightfully reverent of Jackson's musical contributions and ability to break racial barriers in the entertainment industry, their sole concentration on and idealization of Jackson's professional achievements neglected the problematic aspects of his celebrity.
During their discussion, there was no mention of Jackson's drug addiction; for West, Jackson "had a joy in being alive." There was also no mention of his skin bleaching or facial reconstruction, and no dialogue about Jackson's preoccupation with having fair-skinned children. For Dyson, "Michael Jackson argued against the very . . . deep and profound bowels of White supremacy in the belly of American political culture."
Finally, West praised Jackson for being "willing to give everything of mind, body, heart and soul" to his audience, when it may be more accurate to say that Jackson—a star since the ripe old age of eleven—often didn't feel as if he had a choice in the matter.
Reverend Irene Monroe
In great contrast to West's and Dyson's romanticized view of Jackson, Reverend Irene Monroe took an investigative approach to his legacy in her July 8 Huffington Post entry entitled "The 'Queerness' of Michael Jackson." Although she basically let Jackson off the hook in regard to his skin bleaching by advocating it was motivated by the skin disorder vitiligo and "not . . . a denunciation of his blackness," she was less convinced of his claimed heterosexuality.
Monroe suggested Jackson was potentially gay, without stating it directly. She asserted that part of his self-annihilation involved his willingness to keep his sexual orientation concealed from the public, even though his alleged "queerness" was rather apparent with his considerably "effeminate" behavior and fondness for "donning outfits in sequins."
Jackson's inability to come clean with the public about his sexuality, Monroe stated, was due to his resistance to adulthood and subsisting homophobia within the black community. His marriages to Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe functioned as career "damage control" against the allegations of child molestation and as proof he was engaging in the "compulsory heterosexuality" expected of him as a black male star.
Patricia Williams
Columbia law professor Patricia Williams expressed frustration and empathy in "Mirror Man," her July 1st discussion of Jackson in the Nation's online edition. She addressed how "many have hailed his 'crossover appeal,'" yet wisely suggested "that 'appeal' had a more sinister undertone" than most prefer to admit.
Williams's analysis focused on Jackson as a severely wounded man, as someone who had been physically and emotionally abused by his father as a child and taken advantage of by the music industry and the public. For Williams, he was "so obviously trapped in [the] mirror, forever reflecting [only] what others wanted him to be."
Nevertheless, Williams held Jackson accountable for the abuse of his own power, which he used not just to de-race himself, numb himself with painkillers, and erect a childhood kingdom, but also to "purchase" his children, who "were all crafted to be 'white' enough to match [his] artfully devised if pathetically alienated image of himself."
Stanley Crouch
In his June 29 New York Daily News op-ed "Boy who never grew up became the man who will never grow old," columnist Stanley Crouch targeted the entertainment industry and pop culture in general as key players in Jackson's troubled life and early demise. Crouch brilliantly evaluated that Jackson was "more a production myth than a human entertainer," the industry's own version of Frankenstein's monster. He added that because Jackson had been at the whims of the industry's narcissistic need for capitalistic gain since childhood, his maturity and his humanity had been compromised in the process.
Similar to Williams, Crouch pointed out how fame and financial wealth not only allowed Jackson to 'buy' his lost childhood, but convinced him he was entitled to a "protracted adolescence." The star was not necessarily racially invested when he so drastically altered his appearance, Crouch said, but desperate to literally appear like the Peter Pan (à la Walt Disney) he had once declared himself to be.
Finally, Crouch speculated that Jackson's drug addiction may have been linked to his numerous surgeries. "All of that surgery might have had more to do with his apparent overuse of pain killers than his public ever knew," he said.
Conclusion
West's and Dyson's assessment of Michael Jackson as a mere genius with limitless potential drastically simplifies the starker realities surrounding Jackson's celebrity. Although Monroe seems too easily convinced Jackson was not in conflict with his racial identity, she addresses the provocative topic of his questionable sexual identity. Finally, both Williams and Crouch are secure in their critique of Jackson's iconic status but are also distressed at the ways in which his lifelong career confined him as a human being.
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