The MJ conspiracy

Today I read a story in the papers that reminded me of a very distinct childhood memory. I think I must have been about eight or maybe nine and on holiday in Spain. I was playing in the pool with some newly made Dutch friends, when all of a sudden they introduced a new kid. And the new kid was black. That’s right. It may strike you as funny but at that age (late 80s) I had never seen a black person in person. I remember going up to the kid, who was about my age, and asking him in all my childish naiveté if I could touch his skin. I guess I just wanted to know what black skin felt like. He said yes and so I stuck out a little finger and poked him in the forearm. I remember clearly that I was very surprised. I had expected the skin to feel different, perhaps more coarse I don’t know, but I was astonished to find that his skin felt just like mine. ‘Well what do you know,’ I told my parents that afternoon, ‘they’re just like we are!’.

I’m never quite sure whether this story means that at age eight I was essentially a racist or not. Sure, my conclusion was that we were no different from each other, but still I had expected that there would be a difference and I based that assumption (perhaps ‘prejudice’ is a better word?) on racial grounds. However, in the end I guess that whatever my basic attitude, I learned the correct lesson: that although there is an undeniable difference in appearance between races, appearance is as far as the difference goes…

At the same time, there is that difference, but even as I’m typing this I feel that we’re not really comfortable discussing that. After all, why discuss it, if it doesn’t matter, right?

Well, let’s go back to the newspaper article I mentioned earlier. It’s about Michael Jackson’s daughter, Paris Katherine Jackson (°1998), who is going into acting. In the article she is just called his daughter, but you see, I have a theory about MJ’s kids – at least about the first two, the oldest is known as ‘Prince’ (°1997) – and it’s quite simple: I’m not really convinced they’re his.

My reasons? Simple observation, really.

Here’s a picture of Michael with his father (Joseph Walter "Joe" Jackson) and his mother (Katherine Esther Scruse):

They are both black people (they’re not of mixed heritage, which could explain things further down the family tree), and therefore their child, Michael, was a black person too:

Now we all know that somewhere along the way Michael turned himself from a handsome black man into a scary white woman. You know what I mean, but here’s a pic anyway.

Bear in mind, though, that these changes were done with plastic surgery, i.e. skin transplants and skin products. They are not genetic. Michael’s DNA is what it always was, that of a negroid man.

Now, have a look at Michael’s partner, Debbie Rowe, who was MJ’s partner from 1996 to 1999, and who is Prince’s and Paris’ mother:

Now genetics dictate that MJ and Rowe’s children should be of mixed heritage. Someone like Halle Berry, for instance, whose mother is of European descent and whose father is African-American, or like Barack Obama, who is the son of a father from Kenya and a European American mother.

So we should expect MJ’s children to look something like that. Instead this is what his daughter and son look like:

Now does that seem right to you? Indeed, there have been persistent rumours, especially about Prince’s father being someone else. (By the way, there are no Wikipedia pages with detailed information on any of the Jackson children!) And let’s be honest, who would be surprised to find out that Wacko Jacko’s kids were really someone else’s? Isn’t it quite possible that a person who obviously had a pathological wish to be a white person, faked having white children?

So is our culture just too politically correct to ask these questions, or am I still, after all these years, being racist when I’m surprised that a black person’s kids don’t look black enough?

I wonder.