Word: blackly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...black American men of a certain generation - my generation - the death of Michael Jackson is a particularly heavy loss...
...best memories of MJ is from my seventh birthday party, in September 1984. The period was, in many ways, a high point for black people in American pop culture: Jackson was at his professional peak, and The Cosby Show was just about to debut, giving the country and, eventually, the world, the first true lesson in what it means to be black and middle class. At my party, in my grandmother's New Orleans backyard, MJ's then mocha-toned face was everywhere: on the balloons, the napkins, the paper plates. Even the cake was shaped like MJ's head...
...wasn't the only black kid who wanted to grow up to be MJ - or had parents who wanted the same thing. I didn't care about the ridicule that might have come from those who'd already dismissed Michael as not black enough, even though, at 7, I was already wrestling with my racial identity. Within a year, most of the record collection had been scratched from overuse or lost. In hindsight, it was far too precious a gift for a 7-year-old. I cringe at the thought of how valuable they might be today. (See TIME...
...matured, I remained an MJ loyalist, even as he embarked on his often startling evolution: the skin-lightening, the child-molestation charges, the marriage to Lisa Marie Presley. I did not consider him a pariah. Nor did most of my black friends. That reverence was rooted in the fact that MJ's defiance of easy categorization showed us it was O.K. to be different. But even while being different, he remained true. His appearance kept changing but you could hear his roots. His music managed to retain its authenticity, its soulfulness, even as it ventured further into pop. We were...
...course, like everyone else, black men wondered about MJ's physical and mental health, and what drove him to dangle one of his kids from a German hotel room's balcony. But rarely did we air those concerns publicly. For some, it was more comfortable to remember the "old Mike," or "black Mike" - the one with the Afro, wide nose and plump cheeks, before he morphed into something resembling a gaunt white woman. Some sociologists may argue that our collective reluctance to demonize or abandon MJ at the height of his troubles was rooted in our inability to confront issues...