get inside the heads of non-white people

Michael Jackson

(1958 - 2009)

How do those in the oppressed group answer the question "who am I?" Albert Memmi writes that the oppressed internalize an identity that mirrors or echoes the images put forth by the dominant group. People come to accept and believe the images put forth about their group as part of their natural definitions of self. Moreover, in questioning their own positions in society, members of the oppressed groups often believe that the source of their problems lies not in the structural relations in society, but in themselves, in their own inadequacies and inabilities to be anything other than what the dominant image describes.

--Frantz Fanon,
The Wretched of the Earth (1961)

At a certain point in their existential experience, the oppressed feel an irresistible attraction toward the oppressor and his way of life. Sharing this way of life becomes an overpowering aspiration. In their alienation, the oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressor, to imitate him, to follow him.

--Paulo Freire,
Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)

I remember Michael Jackson for the internalized racism that he seemed to increasingly display, and for how the incredible light in his young eyes gradually faded as he grew older, perhaps in part as a result of that burden.

I remember him more, though, for so much amazing music, and for what was even more amazing to me, the many ways that he made his body move.