0070 | May 06, 2019

Michael Jackson:
Transforming the Racial Imagination

Though it is widely accepted that Michael Jackson suffered from vitiligo, there is still much to be learned from looking at our own responses to his cosmetic transformation. What does Jackson’s appearance say about our own racial imagination?

[music]
C.T. WEBB: 00:19	Good afternoon, good morning or good evening. And welcome to The American Age podcast. This is C. Travis Webb, editor of The American Age. And I am speaking to you from another local in Southern California but still SoCal, so. Gentlemen.
S. FULLWOOD: 00:33	Yes, this is Steven G. Fullwood, co-founder of The Nomadic Archivists Project, and I am still in Harlem, reporting.
S. RODNEY: 00:41	Where you should be, my brother.
S. FULLWOOD: 00:43	I think so.
S. RODNEY: 00:45	A beacon of light.
C.T. WEBB: 00:46	Where we all should be.
S. RODNEY: 00:48	I’m in the South Bronx. My name is Seph Rodney. I am an editor at Hyperallergic, the arts blog. And I was actually just on The Jim Jefferies Show last week. But y’all listening to this now will not have any evidence or proof of that until the Fall when the show airs on Halloween. So there’s that.
C.T. WEBB: 01:11	Yeah, yeah. We’ll be chatting that up quite a bit, so.
S. FULLWOOD: 01:13	Absolutely.
C.T. WEBB: 01:14	That’s some good publicity for our tiny little podcast, so.
S. RODNEY: 01:18	Nice.
C.T. WEBB: 01:20	So we may even rename it the Seph Rodney podcast as we get closer.
S. RODNEY: 01:24	That’s a good idea. I mean, he’s a man about talent, about the nation–
C.T. WEBB: 01:29	That’s right.
S. RODNEY: 01:30	–international travel.
C.T. WEBB: 01:31	Maybe we’ll get a few more listeners out of it, so.
S. FULLWOOD: 01:34	Couple of clicks.
S. RODNEY: 01:35	That’s funny. That’s funny.
C.T. WEBB: 01:35	So we’re a little bit handicapped today because Seph and Steven can’t see me. I’m in a different studio and it’s not quite as fully set up as the other, so. But today’s conversation is continuing our conversation about Michael Jackson, and specifically, Seph and Steven, both, had brought up last time that they wanted to talk about basically his– what would maybe be encapsulated as his racial transformation.
S. RODNEY: 02:07	I like that.
C.T. WEBB: 02:07	Or at least that’s how it reads, right? I mean, whether that’s actually what’s happening or not, we can take apart. But it’s certainly something to talk about. So Seph or Steven, do one of you guys want to just kind of lead us into what your thoughts are on that?
S. FULLWOOD: 02:24	Seph?
S. RODNEY: 02:25	I can do it. I think that one of the things that is intriguing to all of us is a couple of aspects of his – we’re calling it – racial transformation. Well, maybe I’m speaking for me, but I think that we share these concerns. One is what it means for a man who is born into a culture where his blackness is a kind of power, right, is a kind of entree to a particular cosmos of action, right? He came up in a family called The Jackson 5. And just [bracketing?] aside for a moment, their talents as musicians, as singers, as entertainers. As black men and women, they took part in a kind of lexicon of blackness, of black music, which is particular to black people. It’s a special thing, right. It is not–
S. FULLWOOD: 03:38	And a superpower.
S. RODNEY: 03:38	–the other things that we can–
S. RODNEY: 03:40	What?
S. FULLWOOD: 03:40	Kind of superpower.
S. RODNEY: 03:42	Kind of superpower, right. Exactly. It is a thing that doesn’t show up elsewhere in the American cultural lexicon. And we all know that it is a kind of superpower because it is unique, right. The blues, hip hop, jazz, certain kinds of R&B, these are all essentially–
C.T. WEBB: 04:06	Well, rock and roll, when you go back to it actually, is [inaudible].
S. RODNEY: 04:08	Thank you. Thank you. Exactly. Thank you for that reminder. These are essentially genres of music that come out of the black experience. So there’s that in his backstory. And yet he moves towards this ostensible– what’s the word I’m looking for? It’s that word that we use to talk about– phenotype. Right. The sort of phenotypical sort of presentation of European whiteness, right, the thinner nose, the squared jaw. Although that’s not necessarily European. But the–
C.T. WEBB: 04:55	Pigmentation.
S. RODNEY: 04:56	Pigmentation and the hair.
C.T. WEBB: 04:57	Hair. I’m sorry. Yeah.
S. RODNEY: 04:58	Right. Those are the main things. The nose, the hair, the pigmentation, right? That he moves towards this sort of– any signifier of the thing that is almost the opposite of that super-empowered blackness, right, that funk, that ability to take the hits and keep coming on, that refusal to say no, that improvisational spirit. All those things are signified by a blackness. And in a way I guess what I’m getting at is that he’s a really fascinating character because he still had all those things, right? Nobody had done the moonwalk in the way that Michael Jackson had done. I mean, maybe other people had done it another–
S. FULLWOOD: 05:50	They have, yeah.
S. RODNEY: 05:51	Right, in other circumstances. But no one on the stage in a way that he did it, right? And it became– literally, him doing that became a worldwide phenomenon. So he’s a strange character for me in that he didn’t– and he birthed in blackness, holds on to some of the sort of powers and abilities and trickster qualities of blackness but yet moves towards this phenotypical white European appearance and American appearance seemingly because he was just unhappy with himself. I don’t know. Does he gain something from that? Does he lose? It’s a question.
S. FULLWOOD: 06:39	I don’t know. I think I’m going to throw some things at you, Seph and Travis, related to this idea of Michael wanting to be white. I think the lens is both instructive and deceptive in terms of the optics, right. So if Michael Jackson– these are the ifs. These are the questions. If Michael Jackson did not have vitiligo– this has been confirmed since he was dead. He actually had vitiligo.
C.T. WEBB: 07:05	Steven. Steven.
S. RODNEY: 07:05	Yeah, he did.
C.T. WEBB: 07:06	Why don’t you explain what that– I mean, I’m sure most of our listeners that are probably listening to a podcast know Michael Jackson know, but just to be safe.
S. FULLWOOD: 07:15	No problem. Vitiligo is a long-term skin condition characterized by patches of skin losing their pigment. So sometimes you might see it with someone– sometimes you’ll see it on the face where it’s almost like a mask around the eyes or the lips, the nose. And then also I’ve known people who’ve had it on their arms. At least one man I knew took pigment pills to maintain his pigment. And I’m not even sure how that worked because it was when I was a kid. I just accepted it wholesale as an idea. But with Michael, Michael said that he had vitiligo and continued to have vitiligo and it was getting worse. I did some reading today about it and that one of his biographers said that he definitely used skin lightening cream. But I stay with my original point which is had Michael Jackson not had vitiligo, would we be even having this discussion about his, what appears to be, transracialness, or? Would we be having it? In addition to that – I think I mentioned this before – in ’84, when he was doing that Pepsi commercial with the Jacksons when they were on the Victory Tour, part of his head had been singed and he could no longer grow hair there. So I often wonder if that not had happened, would be looking at a different-looking Michael Jackson?
C.T. WEBB: 08:35	Yeah. I mean, what occurs to me when I think about the conversation around his racial transformation– I mean, that’s how I labeled it. That being said, I feel like it’s a more powerful reading on our culture and kind of the straitjackets that we put ourselves in when it comes to imagining human beings. And so here is an entertainer. And from what I’ve read – it’s certainly not as much as Steven and probably you as well, Seph – he was not someone that rejected his blackness or the black community, particularly earlier in his life, and felt very much like he was a black artist. He had a disease, right? He had a disease that did something to his appearance. And he tried to deal with that as an entertainer in the ways that were available to him. And to me that doesn’t necessarily mean that he wants to be white. It means he wants to not look like a freak because his entire life is about being presentable and being an entertainer and an icon for people.
S. FULLWOOD: 09:56	And legible. Like what do you–
C.T. WEBB: 09:57	Yeah, legible. Thank you. Fantastic word. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. And–
S. FULLWOOD: 10:03	Go ahead.
C.T. WEBB: 10:03	No, no, no. Steven, please. Please go ahead.
S. FULLWOOD: 10:05	No, I’m just thinking about what you were saying. I agree with you. I think that he could’ve decided after Thriller to retire. He was done. Do you know? But by the time he gets to Bad in I think– ’87, I think, when Bad came out. And so you see a very different-looking Michael Jackson than you see on the cover of Thriller. And I had mentioned before that it disgusted me. I didn’t buy the album for years because it was like, “Well, what am I looking at? Am I looking at lighting, makeup? What am I looking at? I don’t know.” But I felt like everyone else was like– there was some critique about it. And the easiest lens was to say he was trying to be white. And so it ignores light-skinned people who have ever had [inaudible]. It ignores a lot of different things around that. But I think what you said earlier about the reading of– it tells us more about the public reading him. If we didn’t live in such a racially polarized kind of society, we’d have a different reading here. And also an escape into whiteness has been– that’s a part of the African-American experience. If you’re light enough and you’re able to pass, then why wouldn’t you? And there are many stories about that. So, yeah.
C.T. WEBB: 11:14	Yeah. [crosstalk].
S. RODNEY: 11:18	Well, two things. One is I think you’re right, and I think this sort of a [inaudible] read on, “This is the right one to have,” which is that, in some ways, reading Michael Jackson is moving towards whiteness is actually about our own – particularly in the black community – fear and resentment of constantly being in some ways told if you’re black, stay back, right, that being black is in some ways some sort of inborn deficiency, right? That’s a problem, right? But here’s the thing, I think, that complicates that. And, again, I want to say I think that reading is correct that that’s about our fear of being hated. But, at the same time, Michael Jackson went out of his way to only– well, I don’t know if he went out of his way. But he pretended to have relationships with only white women. And the children that he supposedly engendered– he engendered with a white woman who I don’t think anybody ever saw her again. I don’t know what happened to her. But there was a way in which the other kind of [subsidiary?] actions that he took in terms of the relationship– no. I should say the romantic relationships that he formed seemed to– seemed to.
S. FULLWOOD: 12:39	That we know of.
S. RODNEY: 12:40	Right, that we know of. That’s right. That’s right. Well, besides the molestation, right. That’s a whole other issue. But seemed to follow or be absorbed in easily into this narrative or anti-blackness.
S. FULLWOOD: 12:56	Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
C.T. WEBB: 12:58	I mean, to me I think– so I don’t think we should cut Michael Jackson slack in certain areas. But being enculturated the way that we were all enculturated during the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, that the dominant form of beauty was imagined as white, right? I mean, white women, white bodies.
S. RODNEY: 13:22	Particularly European.
S. FULLWOOD: 13:25	Even today. Even today though. I wouldn’t stop at the ’90s.
C.T. WEBB: 13:28	Yeah. So, Steven, okay, I agree. But I do think that there’s some malleability there. I think–
S. FULLWOOD: 13:33	There’s some there, yeah.
C.T. WEBB: 13:34	–Beyonce definitely does not read as a white woman. I mean, maybe.
S. FULLWOOD: 13:38	Are we talking about her hair.
S. RODNEY: 13:39	Not with those hips.
S. FULLWOOD: 13:39	Are we talking about her skin color?
C.T. WEBB: 13:41	I’m sorry. What was that?
S. FULLWOOD: 13:42	Beyonce’s complicated in the way in which she’s presented herself. She’s noticeably lighter than she was before. And also in terms of the texture of her hair and how she presents, she’s kind of a Michael Jackson in a way where you’re reading her in various lenses.
C.T. WEBB: 13:58	But the thing is I–
S. FULLWOOD: 13:58	But there’s been critiques.
C.T. WEBB: 14:00	Yeah. I mean, but black people get to own a variety of aesthetics, right? It might just be that– I mean, it doesn’t have to be that you have to only embrace an Afrocentric hairstyle to still read and be an iconic black artist. And it may be true that– I’m not disputing that her skin has lightened. I actually didn’t know that, but I take you and your word that that’s the case. So okay, I have no problem with that. But it doesn’t mean that the black community doesn’t get to own a variety of aesthetics that alter their given appearance because all cultures do that, right? We adopt a variety of masks on our attributes that are given to us.
S. FULLWOOD: 14:52	I’ll definitely give you that.
C.T. WEBB: 14:52	I don’t want to go too far with that because I do clearly– obviously there is still a very clear preference for a type of white aesthetic. I’m not going to– I’m not suggesting otherwise.
S. FULLWOOD: 15:03	Yes. It’s clear. Yeah.
C.T. WEBB: 15:04	The only thing I’m saying is that put Michael Jackson in the line of all of the other people in this country and culture that idolize the same type of beauty. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a rejection of his blackness as much as it is he is a subject of that culture and is kind of working through that in a– or didn’t work through that in a variety of ways. I mean, some people aren’t really interested in processing the scripts they’re given. Anyway, on that, yes, I think it reveals that the way that it reveals that about like 90% of us, or whatever arbitrary percentage I want to give it.
S. FULLWOOD: 15:51	The only wrench I would throw into that – and maybe not even a wrench but just a different way of looking at it – was when I start out by saying is that when people say what European features are, European features are everything, just like African features. So you have thin-nosed Africans or lighter-skinned Africans. And so you have things that I find are really kind of problematic about a white aesthetic. The lens that we’re looking through is a lens that has been shaped obviously.
C.T. WEBB: 16:16	It’s even a constrained white aesthetic on top of that.
S. FULLWOOD: 16:20	Oh, absolutely.
C.T. WEBB: 16:20	I mean, please keep going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. I see what you’re pointing at.
S. FULLWOOD: 16:21	Absolutely. And so that’s one of the problems I have with it when I think about Michael Jackson who really, for me, is a master marketer. I think he was fully aware of his aesthetic. I think he was so aware of it – hyperaware of it – anyway, according to the anxiety and the sort of things that he reportedly felt in terms of his presentation. Michael Jackson did not go away. Michael Jackson stayed, and he returned with more plastic surgery, or upkeeps, as he put it, is what I think he said when he was issuing an interview with Martin Bashir. Asked him how many surgeries has he had, and he goes, “Only two.” And he was very definitive about it. And I thought about it. It’s like, “Oh, Michael Jackson thinks he’s probably telling the truth, and the rest of it is just upkeep,” because he had a kind of plastic surgery that looks like ’70’s-80’s plastic surgery where you have– well, it wasn’t as good, where it’s much better now. So Michael Jackson might’ve looked totally different had he gotten his surgery in the ’90s or even the early 2000 [inaudible]. Because Janet has the same problem, his sister. Her nose is looking like it’s on the verge of collapsing in a way. And so it’s the kind of surgery that he had.
S. FULLWOOD: 17:34	But, yeah, I just feel like Michael Jackson makes us look at ourselves and our vanity. He makes us look at ourselves and what’s valued and what he feels was valued. But it’s all not circumstantial, but we’re all just theorizing on something because he did very few interviews around that time. His interviews were like Prince’s and Whitney’s. They were to come and try to squash something or to plead their case. “Warner Bros. doesn’t treat me right,” Prince, Michael, “I didn’t do that,” Whitney, “I’m not on drugs,” that kind of thing. But these were people who really didn’t do a lot of interviews, so we don’t know a lot of what they thought about themselves, do you know? It gives us a lot of space for imagining.
C.T. WEBB: 18:20	Seph, I’ll let you to– I was going to– Oh, no, no. Please go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead, please.
S. RODNEY: 18:24	Well, I want to say that that is part and parcel of the nature of being a celebrity is that they are a space for our collective projection. And clearly one of the things that we’re concluding is that Michael Jackson is that to the Nth power, right, that because he looms so large in the cultural imagination and our imaginations that he becomes a kind of– and this is what I was actually thinking about. And I didn’t know I’d get to a point where I’d be able to say this and it would fit in, but it seems like it does now. I was thinking about this at the top of the podcast, when we were doing our preparations, that in a way Michael Jackson is a kind of floating signifier, right? And even his racial identity is a kind of floating signifier. I mean, people can argue, and I think convincingly, that there is a way in which Michael Jackson may have moved towards a more white European aesthetic. Again, understanding that that white European aesthetic shows up everywhere and is part of the aesthetic that we’re all acculturated into. People can convincingly argue that he moved towards that in order to be palatable to whiter audiences, right? But at the same time, we’re also saying that he never stopped being a black artist. And he really didn’t, I mean, in a range of ways, right, in the sort of audiences he has, and the people that were his family, and the people that counted him as friends. I mean, there’s a way in the presentation of his singing and his musicianship. Yeah, and there’s way in which he never stopped being black.
S. RODNEY: 20:16	So he feels very much like a floating kind of signifier to me. Well, depending on the kind of lens you look at Michael Jackson with, he’s either there or he’s somewhere else.
C.T. WEBB: 20:29	Yeah. I appreciate the Stuart Hall reference because actually, I think it’s very apropos for Michael Jackson. And I think it connects really well with Steven’s point, which is that it’s not as if this type of nose, that type of pigmentation, that shape, face, body, hair type is representative of Europeans in general or white people in general.
S. RODNEY: 20:57	This is true.
C.T. WEBB: 20:57	It’s such a constrained notion of all of it.
S. RODNEY: 21:01	It’s true.
C.T. WEBB: 21:03	Literally all humans–
S. RODNEY: 21:03	It’s true.
C.T. WEBB: 21:05	I don’t care. Unless you’re talking about a particular family– there’s a such a variety of traits. And it reminds me of– a friend had observed once that in film, on television in film, it’s even transgressive to have blonde people and dark-haired people mate. So if you want to show– we’re so twisted around color and such a constrained notion of beauty that to even represent, say, a blonde woman with a dark-haired – both of them white – this is to show a transgressive relationship, right. You see on the Game of Thrones. The fire and ice, the representations of these two things, these two figures. You have the dark-haired, raven-haired Jon Snow and sort of the white-haired, platinum-blonde Targaryen or whatever. And this is somehow– it’s that little bit of excitement, a like, “Oh, are these opposites going to get together?” I mean, these are white, white, white people, the whitest white, my-belly white. And then it’s like–
S. FULLWOOD: 22:18	You’re hilarious. I thought you were going to go for the feet though. Something I didn’t see much sign, okay.
S. RODNEY: 22:22	What did you say, Steven? I missed that. What?
S. FULLWOOD: 22:23	I said I thought Travis would go for the feet and say something that didn’t see much sunlight. I was like, “I love that. Thank you for that, Travis.
C.T. WEBB: 22:31	But, yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, but even there we’re constrained culturally around coupling in that way. So, anyway. I thought it was a good observation, Steven.
S. FULLWOOD: 22:43	No, that’s pretty awesome to say that I think. So I wanted to go– just to think for a moment about the changing times of the acceptance of plastic surgery. Don’t you think Michael came up in a time– he was both musically set-up to succeed in terms of his forefathers and foremothers in the racial moment, the time, but also about the acceptance of plastic surgery because as far as I know– and please, Travis and Seph, if you guys know anything. I don’t know if anybody other than black people really kind of went, “What is going on with Michael Jackson’s face?” as much as black people did and what that meant.
C.T. WEBB: 23:23	I think that’s right. I think that’s right.
S. FULLWOOD: 23:25	But what is that though?
S. RODNEY: 23:26	Agreed. Totally agree.
S. FULLWOOD: 23:26	Because it’s like, “But what is that?” And I think it’s the– for me it’s the rabbit-hole, right? If you think about this, then you have to think about this. And if you think about this, you have to think about that. And so as long as Michael Jackson was making decent music, who gave a fuck, right?
C.T. WEBB: 23:38	Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do think the critiques and observations of that came out of a kind of awareness of racial identity, I mean, and certainly in culturally and intellectually. I don’t think in mainstream media or sort of typical conversations about Michael Jackson, I don’t think this is something that comes up. If I were to bring it up to my relatives who actually like Michael Jackson, I think they would kind of see that as sort of nonsense, like, “Oh, it just doesn’t matter. Why are you so focused on his race? Why are you so–?”
S. RODNEY: 24:18	“It’s your problem. You’re a [crosstalk]–“
C.T. WEBB: 24:20	That’s right. [crosstalk], right.
S. FULLWOOD: 24:20	“Why do you have a brain and are thinking–“
S. RODNEY: 24:21	“You’re the racist.”
S. FULLWOOD: 24:22	“Why do you care about–?”
C.T. WEBB: 24:24	Yeah, yeah.
S. RODNEY: 24:25	Y’all remember this shit, right, that on Fox News at some point– I mean, they traffic in nonsense. But on Fox News a couple years someone said– and actually I must have been doing the Obama administration. Someone said something like– oh, it was Dinesh D’Souza that it was. I think it was him. He said something like he keeps bringing up race because he’s a racist. I want to say no. We talk about race because it is fundamental. Here’s the interesting thing about Michael Jackson’s demigod status is that– we got to that point of clarity a couple weeks ago or last week. As Travis put it, the gods demand their sacrifice, which is how we came to a sort of understanding about what his molestation of those boys – alleged molestation, but I think he did it – Safechuck and Wade Robson, what that meant. I think one of the things that I’m coming to understand is that that demigod status can still be leavened or, in some ways, continuate.
C.T. WEBB: 25:47	Constrained. Yeah.
S. RODNEY: 25:48	Yes.
C.T. WEBB: 25:48	That right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
S. RODNEY: 25:49	I mean, this is how powerful our racial imaginations are, right?
C.T. WEBB: 25:57	Absolutely.
S. RODNEY: 25:57	That status gets constrained by our own racial imagination. So we’re like, “Yeah. Okay, he’s a demigod. But still, is he black enough? What’s going on with his face? Why does he have a cleft chin? What the fuck?” right?
S. FULLWOOD: 26:11	As if there weren’t blacks who have cleft chins, but go ahead. Yes. It makes me laugh a lot. It makes a lot, lot. I just want to mention this before we kind of start wrapping up is that Michael Jackson has repeatedly said in the few interviews that he’s done that he was abused a child and that there are other stories that confirm that but also say that Michael didn’t want to look like Joe. None of those kids did because of the upbringing. So that’s yet another sort of element of this face-change, this reducing of the nose. Because all of them had healthy, brown noses. But like I said, their larger noses aren’t– they’re relative to something, right? But it also isn’t germane to blackness. It’s germane to a fictive blackness.
C.T. WEBB: 26:59	Well, a particular black man is what it’s [crosstalk].
S. FULLWOOD: 27:02	Right. But it’s fictive. It’s like, “There’s the guy. But he is obviously not the–” what do you call it. “He’s not [inaudible] people of African descent anywhere. He’s just a type.”
C.T. WEBB: 27:11	Different [inaudible] type person.
S. FULLWOOD: 27:13	But he also could be a European or an Indian person or a Chinese person, depending on what we’re looking at. But if they didn’t want to look like Joe– so if you don’t want to look like something, do you want to look like something else automatically is the question I was kind of curious about.
C.T. WEBB: 27:30	I mean, one thing, and I’m sure Steven could get have a whole podcast on this alone, but one of the ways I was just thinking about him contrasting Michael with Prince, obviously because they’re two major icons that were in the cultural imagination and prominent at the same time. And there’s a way in which Prince plays with that which destroyed Michael Jackson, right? I mean, as far as it getting away from him, right, and the increasing lengths he went to maintain a particular kind of appearance, whether we call the whiteness or European or whatever, right? He was clearly chasing something – as you pointed out, Steven – and was cultivating something. But there was a way in which Prince was able to handle that more deftly in– well, I’ll just stop it there. I mean, Steven, what do you think?
S. FULLWOOD: 28:28	Oh, just wondering in terms of his skin color, you mean?
C.T. WEBB: 28:31	Yeah. I mean, just all of it. I mean, the way that Prince would put on an take off the sort of stereotypical black comportments or would or play with sort of the black and white imagery. And in the whole bag that is Prince, he seemed to be obviously very self-conscious about it.
S. FULLWOOD: 28:55	Very. I think he was as good as a musician as he was as a marketer. I think maybe even a better marketer. And he was a pretty damn good musician, but I think that he understood the racial dynamics surrounding his skin. He was very adept at playing that and to his advantage because few folks knew that he had a nose job or few folks cared. But he had plastic surgery as well but it wasn’t as pronounced.
C.T. WEBB: 29:22	Right. Right. I didn’t know that Prince had a nose job actually.
S. RODNEY: 29:25	I didn’t know that either. I think it was the– you, I think, will know this, Steven. He showed for an award show a few years before he died, and I think it was the NAACP Spirit Awards maybe. And he showed up in a full fro. He was on stage, and he was giving an award away. And that was the first time I’d seen Prince ever sport anything like what we call kinky hair, hair that’s like my texture. And so I was actually surprised. I didn’t know that– literally, I didn’t know that Prince had it in him. I did not know that that was a thing. But the way the people– and I know there was good feeling for Prince anyway. Prince is, again, another demigod. But also, his charitable work was– I think that he was very good at letting people know about the kind of charitable work that he was doing that was really instrumental in changing the life chances for many people.
S. FULLWOOD: 30:30	Absolutely, yeah.
S. RODNEY: 30:31	But the kind of adulation that he got– adulation he got when he stood on that stage. The way that black stood up and just the way they looked at him, the way they applauded. You could feel the love and deep, deep, deep respect in that room. I couldn’t help but feel like– well, I don’t know if it’s a constraint, but it’s a constant cord in the sort of orchestration of blackness in this nation that when black people who [recognizes?] black do something really good and then they do it for a long time. When you show up in a public place, people are just grateful, just deeply grateful to their bones. And they will give you that love. They will say, “You did it. You kept faith. You made it, and you made it for us in some ways.”
S. FULLWOOD: 31:29	You didn’t ditch us, so to speak.
S. RODNEY: 31:31	Exactly. Exactly.
S. FULLWOOD: 31:31	Do you know?
S. RODNEY: 31:33	Exactly. Right. Whereas I think this is particularly why people have a hard time letting go of obvious miscreants like Bill Cosby and–
S. FULLWOOD: 31:45	R. Kelly. R. Kelly.
S. RODNEY: 31:49	What?
S. FULLWOOD: 31:50	R. Kelly.
S. RODNEY: 31:51	That was the other one I was trying to get out, R. Kelly. Well, we all know that you go on social media and you will find lots of people defending these men to the death, right? And I think part of it is that they just don’t want to be ditched. They just think, “No. He’s still a demigod for me. I’m not letting go. I’m [crosstalk]–“
S. FULLWOOD: 32:20	It’s a lack of imagination and a lack of justice, I find.
S. RODNEY: 32:24	Yeah. Well, there’s that too.
S. FULLWOOD: 32:25	Unforgivable in a way, really.
C.T. WEBB: 32:28	So I think we’re coming up on time. So Steven and Seph, I guess we’ll chat a little bit after the podcast about where we go next or if there’s something else you guys want to talk about with Michael. I’m happy to do that, so.
S. RODNEY: 32:41	Well, I think all of us are at the point, I hope – correct me if I’m wrong – where we’re kind of– we’d like to put down the burden of Michael Jackson though.
S. FULLWOOD: 32:50	The burden of Michael Jackson.
C.T. WEBB: 32:51	I’m good to–
S. RODNEY: 32:53	He’s heavy. He’s heavy, and we’ve carried him around for a while.
S. FULLWOOD: 32:55	But he’s my brother.
C.T. WEBB: 32:57	So I feel like we need to tell our sound engineer as he exits this episode he should take out our normal music and play Thriller. So I think that should happen. That’s how our podcast should close.
S. RODNEY: 33:06	Yeah. Yes, I love it. [inaudible].
S. FULLWOOD: 33:09	This is awesome.
C.T. WEBB: 33:09	So Steven and Seph, thanks very much for the conversation.
S. FULLWOOD: 33:13	Thank you very much.
S. RODNEY: 33:13	Yes, thank you, Travis.
	[music]

References

**No References for Podcast 0070**

Michael Jackson: Transforming the Racial Imagination

0070 | May 06, 2019

Michael Jackson:
Transforming the Racial Imagination

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