It’s been all about Michael Jackson on the news ever since he died. The first reaction was shock. The second was the curiosity about what happened. And the third was an outpouring of grief. There were pictures upon pictures of people rushing to his home, to the hospital, to his star on Hollywood Boulevard leaving flowers and candles, while shedding tears. Tears!! Why tears? I don’t understand. I think I’d cry if I lost a family member, or a close friend, or maybe someone with whom I could identify in any way. But Michael Jackson? I don’t think so. What I do feel is pity for the life he lived.
It has come out now that it is very probable that he died of an overdose of demerol, or perhaps another drug or combination of drugs. Why? Why is it that someone with so much talent, so much success, so much money and adulation would need to take drugs? Is it possible that he had no self-esteem when he began his career. Is it possible that he had no self-confidence in himself and doublted that he could perform at a level that was expected of him. Did he need to face these challenges with the help of the stimulus of drugs? Did they make him feel a mile high?
I think that his attempt to transform himself from a black man to a feminized white person was his attempt to get away from the negative self-image that he had of himself. The remarkable thing is that a man who seemed to have so many gifts didn’t have the gift of self-assurance. I think it is that quality that comes after you think you might be able to perform in your chosen field (self-esteem), after you have tested yourself and know you can perform (self-confidence), and then can face the world with self-assurance (accepting yourself for who you are, regardless of how your perform at any given time.)
Perhaps we mere mortals without any talent find it easier to accept ourselves for who we are without resorting to such powerful, artificial, reality changing means.
Let me attempt to help you understand from my point of view-The Black Perspective:
Why the tears, why the drugs, why the no self-esteem, why the negative self-image, and why the lack of self-assurance? In order to answer your questions, however, I must first put them in respective order:
1) Why the lack of self-assurance
2) Why the negative self-image
3) Why the no self-esteem
4) Why the drugs
5) Why the tears
According to Carl Jung Psychodynamic Theory, the personal unconscious contains our repressed thoughts, and forgotten experiences. They consist of the memories from the past, which give rise to certain typical mental images stored in the collective unconscious.
Lack of Self-Assurance
Africans led a very happy life in Africa. What they didn’t know is that they would be kidnapped and brought to America to be worked to death. We as African Americans, for centuries suffered the evils of oppression. Lost to an unknown culture, an unknown people, and an unknown sense of belonging. No self-assurance of our past was allowed or permitted, stripped of our culture. Our true history was not taught in school. Historical societies even through 1980’s published countless histories that largely ignore the African American past. All that was known was that we were the victims of Racism, a belief system that separated us into various groups based on physical attributes and that these groupings determined or cultural or individual achievements. Then continuing with the Jim Crow Laws from 1877 through the mid 1960’s that legally separated the entire Black race from the white race. This is a continuing impact which most blacks face every day of their lives and influence their behavior.
Negative Self-Image
As a Black child in the 1960’s during the civil rights movement, living in a world where there were no positive images of being Black, I was entranced and imprisoned by major traumas and abandonments as a result of racism. Like Michael Jackson, I was ridiculed from both the white race and my own race for being Black and dark skinned, resulting in a negative self-image, even today.
Black self-hatred consists of the “lighty v.s. darkies” conflict, or light-skinned straight-haired blacks versus dark complexioned curlier haired blacks (sometimes with a big nose). This is solely due to the effects of slavery and segregation, during which times light-skinned blacks (which included Quadroons and even Octoons ) were treated considerably better by their white masters or by white society in general than their more full-blooded brethren. In addition, to note this Self-hatred existed on the African continent as well, mostly due to European colonizers preaching the concept that certain groups were more “Caucausian” in appearance than others led to the Rwandan Genocide theory. Moreover, let us not forget the only picture of Jesus in all public and private settings, despite the description depicted in the Bible.
No Self-Esteem
Self-hatred or no self-esteem literally refers to an extreme dislike of oneself, or being angry at oneself. The term is also used to designate a dislike or hatred of a group to which one belongs. It is ingrained in subtle ways from childhood as was with the relationship between, Michael Jackson and his father and I am sure, his social surroundings.
Self-hate arises when the minority-group member, who takes so many of his values from the majority group, learns to think of himself in its terms (a minority). Because his group is strange in their eyes (the majority), he comes to believe himself strange. Since they look down on him, he begins to look down on himself, particularly on that which differentiates him from the majority (black skin, big nose). In the black community until recent years, the lighter one’s skin, the higher one’s social status was likely to be. Again, this is solely due to the effects of slavery and segregation.
The Drugs
Social psychology has assumed that one’s self-image derives in large part from how one is viewed by others — family, school, and the broader society. When those views are negative, people may internalize them, resulting in lower self-esteem — or self-hatred. This theory was applied to the experience of African-Americans, by Gordon Allport, Frantz Fanon, Kenneth Clark, and others. The Atlantic Monthly, August 1999, “Thin Ice”
As researched and written by Shreya Khatau, Racism And Its Effects, there is little doubt that psychologically, racism is harmful to its victims. The most profound effect associated with situations of extreme degradation is the acceptance by the oppressed group of the dominant group’s definition of the situation. This is the phenomenon of self-hatred.
Self-hatred is often accompanied by symptoms of apathy, anxiety, and depression or by forms of self-destructive escapist reactions such as alcoholism or drug addiction or, in extreme cases, by paranoid, schizophrenic or manic depressive psychoses. In such situations of extreme degradation then, the oppressed frequently reacts in an ‘intropunitive’ fashion; that is, it turns its frustrations inwardly against the self. Self harm is a psychological disorder, which may involve self-hatred, where the subject feels compelled to physically injure themselves such as drugs and alcoholism.
The Tears
The mind is filled with knowledge, which comes from sense and the observation of things and information that surround us from childhood to present. The wounded histories, abuses, and abandonments that invade the soul results in the choices we make. We are in pain from the result of the demons born by society of yesterday and the hidden injustices and opinions influenced upon us from the past and the current.
Through his pain, Michael achieved the ultimate, regardless of the evils within him. He was compelled through his music to share his love, a love he wanted to surface above all the pain of memories from the past to give rise over the mental images stored in the collective unconscious. Because we understand the struggle of existence, the rejection of self, the struggle to be esteemed, the self-medication to relieve the pain, the need to prove our existence over and over again–we cry.
NOTE: Those that do not understand the mind of the African American, tend to leave cause and effect out of the equation of today. I have heard many express their lack of interest by stating that they do not understand why ancestors are being blamed for the events of today. I have been often asked, “Why the Black Race cannot just move on?” as it can be done easily, without thought. The struggle will exist indefinitely until the past is acknowledged in its entirety.
Janet, I do understand your point of view. If you have read Becoming Alice, you will remember that I am Jewish with a history of the threat of annihilation for that fact.
At this point in time, we have a black couple in the white house who do not deny their heritage, but have chosen not to let that destroy them and just look at what they have accomplished. They should be your heroes, your role models, your sources of pride. And I am proud of the fact that this country has matured to the point that we have been able to elect them.
Yes, I remember us talking during a discussion in a shared group. I hope you did not get the wrong impression with my blog. Destruction is no option; but accomplishment is the reward. Yes, we have many role models today and I agree our country has matured, of which we all should be proud. I wanted to explain from my point of view, however, how the residual effects of the past still exist with all the positives of today.
Our mutual shameful histories will always be there for generations to come. We must not let it destroy us.
I totally agree.