!!! Loved your piece on MJ and blackness.
Im not black, and im not American. I donāt have any authority to speak on this in terms of personal experience, but I have studied post-colonialism a lot.
Last year, I read Malcolm Xās autobiography, and seeing him talk about conversations he had IN THE 1940S that included a LOT of slang that Iām sure all too many non-black people would consider āmodern internet slangā is crazy. Itās AAVE thatās 80+ years old, but you know, like everything else black people pioneered it seems to get erased or āgentrifiedā by another group of people. Michael was particularly amazing because you could not separate what he did from him as a black man. I think a lot of people at the time wouldāve been confronted by his blackness and that they couldnāt appropriate what he had done without it being obvious where the origins were from.
Michael being even unconsciously separated from blackness because he appears āsofterā is upholding racist stereotypes of black people. Itās also racist when you see people who only post about Michael bad era and after, because itās as if they see him being whiter as more attractive and/or palatable.
I have a lot of issues with how many people view Michael generally - I mean isnāt upholding him to some untouchable reverence just as dehumanising as saying he was some evil monster? People are multifaceted and people are shaped by their circumstances. How are people going to apply the circumstances of his life when it comes to him being abused by Joe, but go on as if him being from a town full of black people doing jobs deemed too dangerous for the white man didnāt have influence?
A lot of it is analogous to how the colonial white people treated people of colour in my country, so maybe itās more obvious to me than other white people but stillā¦ I hope more people can deconstruct any (often unknowingly) bigoted views they have.
how refreshing it felt to read this.
