LEONARD PITTS JR.: Jackson hurts fight against real racism
July 19, 2002

You cannot libel a recording industry executive.

At least, that's my humble opinion, based on the 18 years I spent reporting on the $14-billion-a-year business of pop music. I saw gall that would shame a TV preacher, greed that would make an Enron executive blush. So from where I sit, you can say pretty much any nasty thing about the industry and its leaders that your heart desires. Because, as your lawyer will tell you, it ain't libel if it's true.

That's why I wasn't mortified when Michael Jackson took a swipe at Sony Music Chairman Thomas Mottola during a rally at Sony's New York headquarters this month. The self-proclaimed king o' pop, angry that modest sales of last year's "Invincible" album proved him rather vincible after all, laid the CD's failure at Mottola's feet. He called him "devilish."

If anyone had a right to be insulted, it was the devil.

The problem is that Jackson didn't stop there. He also called Mottola racist. It is apparently Jackson's contention that the label failed to promote his album properly because he is black. In supporting him, Jackson told the crowd, they fought for "all black people, dead or alive."

As a black person of the alive persuasion, let me respond in words of one syllable: ha ha ha.

From Elvis to 'N Sync, race has always been a subtext of song, a key factor in determining who got airplay, promotion or pay. Consider just one example: In the early '80s, MTV was notorious for its whites-only policy. Meaning, its refusal to air videos by black artists. Sony reportedly threatened to withhold all its artists from the video channel if it did not play one black singer in particular -- Michael Jackson.

So no, I have no problem with someone raising the issue of racism in pop music. What I question here is the source, the timing and the motive.

Michael Jackson's contract with Sony is said to give him the most generous royalty structure of any major artist in history. The label is reported to have spent a whopping $55 million to produce and promote "Invincible."

I'm sorry, but you don't blow away 55 million bucks to support someone you hate.

What's most galling about this is the idea of Michael Jackson as civil rights leader. Here's a man who's spent years in a full flight from the fact of his blackness, who has never seemed to embrace or even want to be part of the African-American community, who has disfigured himself with medical and cosmetic procedures that seemed designed to erase from his face every last lingering trace of Negro. Now he thinks he's Malcolm-freaking-X?!

Not in this lifetime.

"I know I'm black," Jackson told the audience at a later Summit for Fairness in the Recording Industry convened by the Rev. Al Sharpton.

He's black, all right. Because his album stiffed. Like O.J. Simpson when the cuffs went on, he rediscovers his ancestry when that ancestry becomes convenient to him.

The real tragedy here is that Jackson's shameless accusation makes it easier for minds to close and hearts to harden the next time real racism rears its head.

A black music executive told Billboard magazine, "You could throw a dart at the R&B chart and find almost any artist who would have more resonance on this issue than Michael Jackson."

Martin Luther Jackson should take his own advice. Just beat it.

Makes U feel a bit sorry for him really cos MJ comes over as lost and vunerable, someone should be looking after him.

Ur proberbly right a graceful slide into obscurity whould proberbly be wise, unfortunatly wisdom does not seem to be a strong point. But perhaps his heart is in the right place.

The whole issue is on a drum roll now and theres no going back, change is the only constant...just as well.

LiVe 4 LoVe

surely you are being harsh and bias when it comes to Mr. Jackson, Because he has changed the way he looks and it seems that he changes his features that identify his as African, (your opinion and others as well but still an opinion) Even a White guy can accuse someone of being racist, because MJ says it doesn't make him a monster or a liar, maybe it is true, did you ever consider that, I don't personally know MJ, and I don't think you do either, Martin Luther King Jr. didn't only fight for the rights of Blacks, he fought for the rights of all mankind, and that seems to me what MJ has done all of his career. All children of all races Love him, Why? because they don't see with their tainted eyes, They see something different, If Al Sharpton or Minister Farrakan said he was Racist I can understand your arguement, but MJ who has no prior public battles in this area, if he says it maybe someone should consider it.