GREENVILLE - All too often we cry out for help from a populace we have never formed a human relationship with.
From the early days as a child of Gary, Ind., Michael Jackson has thrilled millions with his unique verve from the eclectic Jackson 5 to mega hits such as "Beat It" and "Thriller."
Jackson and his talent put a new creative edge on the music culture; not just black folks, but the world became entranced by Jackson's stage charm.
But for some reason, Jackson was never comfortable with his Nubian features. In fact, blackness was troubling to him. If that is not true, explain the avalanche of cosmetic surgeries - aimed at making Jackson appear as white as the driven snow.
What Jackson and many others apparently don't understand - even though racism still pounds the social landscape - people tend to look at a person's deeds, the heart and spirit. The hue doesn't play as much of a role in the human equation as some would have you believe.
So now after many surgical enhancements, the so-called "King of Pop" is unabashedly playing the race card - charging the record industry with unmitigated bigotry toward artists of color. When the hits were rolling in for Jackson, there was nary a word that all was not well in record land for artists of color. You know, many of us who live in the real world would love to have been ripped off the way Jackson says he has been.
"Black artists have been taken advantage of completely," Jackson said during a New York City news conference. What Jackson did not indicate is that he is in hock up to his white glove, and sees his carefully crafted empire crumbling around him.
Who's to blame?
Jackson is lambasting Sony Music, and the label's mercurial chairman Tommy Mottola, in a racial smokescreen to divert public attention away from his own creative shortcomings.
"I didn't say Sony was racist, I said Tommy Mottola was racist," Jackson said. "It's time now that we have to put a stop to this incredible injustice."
For a man who would not be black, it is hard to believe Jackson would say such things. But when your CDs are being rejected in the marketplace, one has to utter a response. It's a shame Jackson decided on racism.
"The record companies really, really do conspire against the artists - they steal, they do everything they can," Jackson said. "If you fight for me, you're fighting for all black people, dead and alive."
But Michael, what are you going to do?
Instead of admitting his latest effort for Sony Music, "Invincible," never lived up to the title, even though the disc cost a reported $30 million to produce, and the label sunk another $25 million in promotion, Jackson is yelling "racism!"
When Jackson was spending Sony Music's cash in making the CD, everything was fine. Now that the project flopped, there is a problem.
Jackson is wrapping himself in a shroud of blackness, when he never before had an inclination to do so, always preferring "not to be known as a color." So Jackson is using the color green - the lack of it in his case - as a racial ruse to hold up his record company for his own creative shortcomings.
Enlisting the aid of the buffoonish Al Sharpton, creator of the National Action Network, Jackson is going on the offensive against Sony Music and the "racist" record industry. But I question: In the name of whom? Certainly not John Q. Public.
What is so tragic about Jackson is that when he had the opportunity to speak out as a black man, he chose not to. Now he is demanding that folks from the "hood" come rushing to his defense.
Hey, Michael, we hardly know you.
