by Yvonne Starks

I am an old woman. An old white woman. But that doesn’t stop me from enjoying talent, now just as well as I did in my younger days. There are just three talented people I’m thinking about today. No, not Barack Obama, although he has teleprompter and oratory talent, highly exclaimed by celebrity-crazed fans, pundits, and our cultist media. Even Obama has been  temporarily set aside by the adoring media by one older than he: Michael Jackson. This may give a twinge of reality to those from the 1960s era reminding us that the once-youthful Michael had become middle age. Admittedly, I’ve been a fan of his music and enjoyed his talent for many years, including seeing him perform in person in Atlanta in the 1980s. Having a friend who worked for Jackson’s performance show lighting and who had traveled the world with his entourage, my friends and I had a backstage invitation before the show. We didn’t get to meet and talk with Michael; not even the slightest, most remote chance of that. But, we were able to see his jacket hanging in his dressing room and got to “feel” his presence. Ooooh.

I’ve purchased Motown albums, other Jackson music, and the Thriller video, mementos from when Michael was a young, handsome black man with evolving talent. I’m not including Elvis Presley as one of my three whom I am writing about today, but I need to mention him because he was considered a cross over from black music. Some say this helped our country’s racial divide. Michael Jackson was considered a cross over as well because he was one of the few black performers who initially  “made it big with the whites.” Some say this helped our racial divide.

Jamie Foxx, another famous black performer, hosted a Black Entertainment award show just three days after Michael’s untimely death, where there were already plans in place to honor Jackson, who was planning a comeback world-wide tour. I did not see the actual show, but did see an excerpt where, about Jackson, Foxx screamed to the audience:  “He belongs to us! A black man!”  Huh? I didn’t know that George W. Bush had claimed Jackson as “ours.” What else could have brought that on? I thought the election of Barack Obama had finally closed that racial divide. Does that mean that Obama is not my president if we white people are not allowed to claim any ownership of his election? Wait a minute. It was the 61% of white people who put Obama over the threshold to win the United States Presidency. Perhaps it will be determined in a year or more to which group our bi-racial president belongs, the blacks or the whites, based on his foreign and domestic policy successes and failures.

So, perhaps I have added Obama to my three others after all. The three were Michael Jackson, Jamie Foxx, and Oprah Winfrey. These three became multi-millionaires, famous celebrities, loved personalities in a white majority America because the whites accepted them and their incredible talents with the times changing dramatically through the past several generations. But have those times changed only to reverse the colors? Have we whites become those to be the ones discriminated against?  Michael Jackson doesn’t belong to any one or any race. There could even be a question of which race he thought he was or wanted to be, but I won’t even go there. He belongs to America’s history, America’s talent, and America’s freedom of opportunity to become great. Oprah is one of the richest people in the world and so powerful that she was the first contributing celebrity to actually help Barack Obama in his candidacy for president; it was white Iowa attending her special show to present Mr. Obama to America that started his ascendancy. Iowa is primarily a populated “white state” and yet they attended Winfrey’s show and voted largely for Obama.

Jamie Foxx’s encouragement to his (probably) mainly black audience was hurtful. And, I, an old white woman, am hurt.  Will I need to plan for more than just hurt feelings? I don’t anticipate the dogs or hoses, but I don’t want my pocketbook ravaged or racial discrimination against me either. I want to remember Michael Jackson as part of my young adult life of dancing and listening to music, of rhythm and newness and simply enjoying talent. He “belonged” to me as much as any one else.

Related Posts:

• CBS New York on Rep. Peter King’s comments on media and Michael Jackson; coverage “An Orgy Of Glorification”
• The Star: Local fan has ticket to Michael Jackson memorial, but can’t attend
• Top 10 Most Disappointing Comebacks — #10, Bo Jackson
• AP: Michael Jackson dies in LA hospital
• Forbes: Michael Jackson, Entrepreneur — “He created something out of nothing”

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 11th, 2009 at 4:00 am and is filed under National, Opinion, Editorial, and Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.