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In the movie "Three Kings" Mark Wahlberg, an Americam POW, is asked this question by an Iraqi soldier who bears a striking resemblance to my dentist. Anyway, the Iraqi soldier supplies his own answer: American culture and society compels the black man (and by implication any minority group) to become ashamed of his own race/ethnic background and thereby consciously or unconsciously strive to become "white" in appearance or attitude. This is the reason behind the King of Pop's efforts to make himself look other than he is, bleaching his complexion, straightening his hair, and undergoing one plastic surgery after another to alter his facial features. It is a powerful criticism of our society and the music industry especially (if true), but I think it is a problem particular to Michael Jackson alone.

Most societies, now and historically, have "social ladders" where high ranking is connected to certain attributes, and low ranking to certain attributes. Being black, or afro-american (what is the preferred word?), has certainly been a social stigma in Europe and the US for a long time. It's still a social disadvantage to belong to almost any minority, even if degrees differ.

However, if we're looking for a purely "sociological" explanation, why aren't a majority of black people, especially black famous people, making the same efforts as Michel Jackson to look white?

Blaming society is an oversimplification, I think. IMO, the guy certainly have a lot of personal problems. I can't diagnose people at a distance, but my guess is that he's having *serious* problems.

Originally posted by C Elegans:
<STRONG>Most societies, now and historically, have "social ladders" where high ranking is connected to certain attributes, and low ranking to certain attributes. Being black, or afro-american (what is the preferred word?), has certainly been a social stigma in Europe and the US for a long time. It's still a social disadvantage to belong to almost any minority, even if degrees differ.

However, if we're looking for a purely "sociological" explanation, why aren't a majority of black people, especially black famous people, making the same efforts as Michel Jackson to look white?

Blaming society is an oversimplification, I think. IMO, the guy certainly have a lot of personal problems. I can't diagnose people at a distance, but my guess is that he's having *serious* problems.</STRONG>

I don't know where I heard this, nor how accurate my unknown source is/was; but I had heard somewhere somehow that Micheal Jackson had some kind of skin condition that makes his skin pale toward white. I haven't the floggiest idea if that is true or not(and I don't really care, either).

Oh, and "politically correct" is "African-American." Personally, I think the 'politically correct' stuff is a bunch of idiotic BS. If you were born in Africa and moved to the US and became a US citizen, then you would be African-American; but that doesn't mean you're black either. Anyone who was born a US citizen is an American. If we want to be politically correct, there'd be some awfully long 'titles' out there. i.e., Irish-English-German-Jewish-Spanish-American. Is this an America thing or are there African-English or maybe some Japanese-English? IMO, all these "Politically Correct" titles are actually rather racist.

Here, here, Sailor Saturn. Perhaps I should start calling myself a European-American? Maybe than people will see how silly the whole Politically Correct thing is.

well, even funnier would be if you just got irrate with people and got extremely pissed anytime someone called you white, start calling them racists...hehehehe

Originally posted by nael:
<STRONG>well, even funnier would be if you just got irrate with people and got extremely pissed anytime someone called you white, start calling them racists...hehehehe</STRONG>

LOL This may be inappropriate, but I’ve always thought it would be cool to meet a black guy named Whitey. You don't hear the name that often these days.

sorry if the followign story offends anyone, but the guy in the story was a great friend of mine, and he saw the humor in it, so you should too.

his name was sam white, he was black, and we used to always ask him if his middle name was "ain't"
but the absolute worst name...a friend of a friend...she lived in houston...anita ****. **** will probably get censored...lol!

yep, **** got censored...the magic word is d!ck

Back on topic for the Maichael Jackson thing, I have often heard it claim from sources quoting jackson himself that his pale skin is due to a skin condition that some coloured people suffer from. This is of course an absolute load of b0ll0x, the skin condition that the are talking about creates small patches of pigmentless skin on one or several parts of the body.

IMHO Jackson is so pale because of the plastic surgery, perhaps not as a concientious effort on the part of the surgeons but maybe because he's had so much done in so short amount of time the surgery hasn't healed properly and his body is rejecting.

Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon is a genius. He was able to change a black man into a white woman.

In answer to the thread:

"Woo-ooo. Eeeh-heeh. Michael Jackson."

"Michael Jackson is pop king of sick f*ing country." <a view I don't sympathise with but its a funny line>

Funny movie.

This all kind of reminds me of that thing about not being able to call coffee 'white' or 'black' it has to be 'with milk' or 'without milk'

I thought Michael is the way he is because he was trying to be Diana Ross.???

I think Michael Jackson's music is quite good...his looks, however, are extremely frightening. He looks totally un-natural, which, i suppose, makes since because they are un-natural.

Originally posted by Saruman:
<STRONG>Back on topic for the Maichael Jackson thing, I have often heard it claim from sources quoting jackson himself that his pale skin is due to a skin condition that some coloured people suffer from. This is of course an absolute load of b0ll0x, the skin condition that the are talking about creates small patches of pigmentless skin on one or several parts of the body.</STRONG>

The condition is called VITILIGO. It is the inability of certain areas of your epidermis (dermis?) to produce melanin. Members of the negroid (this term is a technical one, not social, okay?) race would have lots of them, hence the very dark pigmentation. Melanin helps the body from the bad effects of UV rays, that's why people get a "tan" whenever they are exposed to the sun for a significant amount of time. Albinos do not or would have almost nil amount of melanin in their skin.

I don't think Mr. Jackson is an albino nor does he suffer from vitiligo. Whatever it is, I think it's psychosomatic...

Originally posted by Saruman:
<STRONG>Back on topic for the Maichael Jackson thing, I have often heard it claim from sources quoting jackson himself that his pale skin is due to a skin condition that some coloured people suffer from. This is of course an absolute load of b0ll0x, the skin condition that the are talking about creates small patches of pigmentless skin on one or several parts of the body.

IMHO Jackson is so pale because of the plastic surgery, perhaps not as a concientious effort on the part of the surgeons but maybe because he's had so much done in so short amount of time the surgery hasn't healed properly and his body is rejecting.</STRONG>

This is just a thought, but perhaps he does suffer from that skin condition and used plastic surgery to hide the actual effects of it, ne? Just an idea, probably not right, but I just felt like throwing it out there.

You know, it's time I threw in my own two cents on racism.

I am white, and English/Irish/Italian, but I am still easily offended. Even though people never pick on me for my color skin, I hate racism all the more. When I hear people making fun of other racists, it makes me want to cry. I mean, for one thing, Quatre, who pilots Gundam Sandrock, is Arabic, which means I tend to take Arabic jokes a little personally, because I look up to people like Quatre a lot. (((Well, his attitude anyway, any Trowa comments earns you a swirly, unless you have one of them sharp mammoth weapons like SS or nael))) I also am very sensitive against jokes against the Japanese, as all my life I've been fascinated by Japanese culture, although after numerous attempts to learn their language I've given up on the speaking Japanese pretty much. In fact at a Christian campout back in May EVERYBODY including my friends were cracking jokes at Japanese being inferior because of how fast they talk or their pale skin. It hurt me so much I ran away crying. But what they don't know is that Japanese have pale skin because it is prettier to them, and also they don't go out of their way to burn themselves and get skin cancer to change their color either. So who are they to criticize a nation for having good health standards?

And the Arabic jokes. Geez, if you wanna pick on bin Laden, fine, but leave the innocents alone! What about Israel, or Kuwait, or Lebanon and Turkey? How about Yemen and Oman? They're all Arabic and we're in good ties with them! Must we go against our ALLIES to crack jokes? Although some people don't consider the Jewish "Arabic" they've been there since Abraham (for those of you who don't know, Abraham was led by God to the now present day land of Israel, shortly after the Great Flood of Bible days). Still, you're acting like we're superior to them. We are not. Most of the world looks up to us as a great power, but down on us because of our ****iness and simply put, they don't respect the way that we always pick on them for being different. We may not see it, but whoever is a racist is like, Hitler's grandson. That's all Naziism (sp?) is, racism. Believing we're better than someone else because of our color skin is total baloney! What's the difference??? It's just skin!!! The only difference between whites and blacks is how much melanin one layer of epidermis contains. So why hate them over that??? WHAT DID THEY DO WRONG. They did a lot less wrong than we did, because I don't hear anywheres near as many blacks making fun of whites as there are whites making fun of blacks.

And the whole African American thing, I totally agree with Sailor Saturn. We're all Americans. In fact the only true Americans are the Indians. So why should the European Immigrants believe THEY are the only true "Americans"?

Finally, those people who take the term African American and turn it into "a frickin' american"... You suck.

This has been Barry's Random Rant. Have a nice day

Oh wowee! ****iness got censored too! Gee, I didn't mean anything by it! C0ckiness isn't exactly a bad word...

Oh, and Nael, did I mention the time we read Moby **** in fourth grade... we liked to change Moby into a plural. Oh and there goes the censor on Moby **** too. Such a harmless classic about a whale!

at least we know the censor is in good shape ^_^;;

Edited for comment:

@Mr. Sleep -- Gosh, I don't even drink coffee... but wow I never heard of that one! Soon they will be censoring Crayola crayons too for 'dark' and 'light' I bet!

Edited for test:

Just wanna test this here out...



Just wonderin that's all ^_^;;

[ 09-22-2001: Message edited by: Shadow Sandrock ]

Originally posted by Shadow Sandrock:
<STRONG>I am white, and English/Irish/Italian, but I am still easily offended. Even though people never pick on me for my color skin, I hate racism all the more. When I hear people making fun of other racists, it makes me want to cry. I mean, for one thing, Quatre, who pilots Gundam Sandrock, is Arabic, which means I tend to take Arabic jokes a little personally, because I look up to people like Quatre a lot. (((Well, his attitude anyway, any Trowa comments earns you a swirly, unless you have one of them sharp mammoth weapons like SS or nael))) I also am very sensitive against jokes against the Japanese, as all my life I've been fascinated by Japanese culture, although after numerous attempts to learn their language I've given up on the speaking Japanese pretty much. In fact at a Christian campout back in May EVERYBODY including my friends were cracking jokes at Japanese being inferior because of how fast they talk or their pale skin. It hurt me so much I ran away crying. But what they don't know is that Japanese have pale skin because it is prettier to them, and also they don't go out of their way to burn themselves and get skin cancer to change their color either. So who are they to criticize a nation for having good health standards?

And the Arabic jokes. Geez, if you wanna pick on bin Laden, fine, but leave the innocents alone! What about Israel, or Kuwait, or Lebanon and Turkey? How about Yemen and Oman? They're all Arabic and we're in good ties with them! Must we go against our ALLIES to crack jokes? Although some people don't consider the Jewish "Arabic" they've been there since Abraham (for those of you who don't know, Abraham was led by God to the now present day land of Israel, shortly after the Great Flood of Bible days). Still, you're acting like we're superior to them. We are not. Most of the world looks up to us as a great power, but down on us because of our ****iness and simply put, they don't respect the way that we always pick on them for being different. We may not see it, but whoever is a racist is like, Hitler's grandson. That's all Naziism (sp?) is, racism. Believing we're better than someone else because of our color skin is total baloney! What's the difference??? It's just skin!!! The only difference between whites and blacks is how much melanin one layer of epidermis contains. So why hate them over that??? WHAT DID THEY DO WRONG. They did a lot less wrong than we did, because I don't hear anywheres near as many blacks making fun of whites as there are whites making fun of blacks.

And the whole African American thing, I totally agree with Sailor Saturn. We're all Americans. In fact the only true Americans are the Indians. So why should the European Immigrants believe THEY are the only true "Americans"?

Finally, those people who take the term African American and turn it into "a frickin' american"... You suck.</STRONG>

As far as the jokes go, they're fine if they ain't taken too far. Americans don't just make jokes about other races/cultures, we make jokes(and rather bad ones at that) about our own culture.

You're not quite right with your "the only true Americans are the native Americans" statement because you're meaning the Native American tribes that lived in this land before Europeans came. Anyone who was born on the North(or South) American continent(or in Central America) is a Native American. Native means that you were born there, whether your ancestry comes from there or somewhere else. This also means that Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians(sp?), etc are Native Americans. The only European Immagrants(sp?) in America are those who were born in Europe and moved to the US. I often hear people talk about "Mexican-Americans," which annoys me because that is redundant.

*uses her glaive to throw the soapbox at Shadow Sandrock*

Oops, that was supposed to have been thrown to, not at.

I see where you are coming from, but I don't understand racism towards even American citizens that were born here just with different color skin.

Originally posted by Shadow Sandrock:
<STRONG>
@Mr. Sleep -- Gosh, I don't even drink coffee... but wow I never heard of that one! Soon they will be censoring Crayola crayons too for 'dark' and 'light' I bet!
</STRONG>

Indeed they probably will, a sad state of affairs

[ 09-22-2001: Message edited by: Mr Sleep ]