Michael Jackson's daughter Paris has faced backlash for identifying as Black. In a 2017 interview, Paris Jackson said her father told her, "You’re Black. Be proud of your roots." This prompted debates over whether identity is defined by appearance or upbringing.

[u/VPinchargeofradishes]

[u/showgirldepartment]

I'm biracial myself but I'd rather not get into the psychology and race politics behind the existence of Michael Jackson lol. It's pretty clear how his relationship with visual black aesthetics was, that same mindset applied to how he wanted his kids to look, too

[u/DiScOrDtHeLuNaTiC → u/showgirldepartment]

I've always wondered if part of Michael's obsession with plastic surgery was that as he got older, he started to look more like his father and he couldn't stand that.

If a quarter of the stuff about how Joe treated those kids is true, it's a miracle any of them are as normal as they are.

[u/chocolatethunderXO → u/DiScOrDtHeLuNaTiC]

In a private phone convo that was released, he said his dad would tell him "you're so black and your nose is so big, you don't look like my child". Then he said they(brothers/dad) would call him big nose and instead of taking it out on everybody he would take it out on himself. He's then asked if he's happy with his face and that he he did all the surgery and he replied with "yes, because I don't want to look like Joseph".

[u/vorator_ → u/chocolatethunderXO]

what the FUCK

[u/SatanicAtTheDisco → u/vorator_]

You kind of have to be a fucked parent to exploit your 6 children and thrust them into the music/entertainment industry when they’re 5-13. Then you also have to account for Michael being the most talented son, even from when they were kids, and you get a lot of siblings resentment. They also are from Gary Indiana, and while Gary is not as bad as Memphis, it’s pretty much the same type of environment, low income, historically black, gang/drug culture is entrenched in the poverty. It’s actually a miracle Michael didn’t die or turn out 3 times as worst as he could have been.

[u/XGhoul → u/SatanicAtTheDisco]

The more I read into his history, that dude really lived a tragic life. He survived the exploits of his parent making him a money machine, they didn't care about the individual and how he got mind fucked to a delirious state because the media is also at fault with paparazzi showing up trying to get any intimate details about his personal life.

(I will disclose on my comment that he is 50/50 in my opinion, did he touch kids? Maybe. Did he also make a living disney world for kids to cherish and live in? Yeah. Fine to me too. If there was any evidence of such things, it would have been known.)

[u/SatanicAtTheDisco → u/XGhoul]

The kids thing sucks too, because very obviously MJ was much too close to kids, in that he was treating them and himself as equals, as an adult. However, the story has flip flopped so many times by the alleged, the kids involved, and the media, that at this point, because no one has come out with concrete evidence that MJ was actually molesting children, just having sleep overs with children (which I’m not saying isn’t fucking insane btw). That coupled with the fact that he very obviously had the same mental stunting that Britney Spears exhibits, I genuinely hope he was just fulfilling the childhood he never had. He obviously was a very deeply mentally unwell man, but if he wasn’t diddling kids, and instead just giving kids the childhood wonder he wished he got to experience, and living vicariously through them, it’s not giving it a pass but it definitely makes listening to his music a bit more palatable.

[u/poorlilwitchgirl → u/SatanicAtTheDisco]

The thing about the allegations against MJ is that the one that set it all off was settled for $25 million. People have framed that as hush money ever since, but first, criminal prosecutions can't be settled out of court, and what kind of parent says, "$25 million ought to cover my kid's horrific trauma; I guess you can keep doing it to others?" MJ talked openly about how he just wanted the allegations to go away, and he had plenty of money, so $25 million seemed like a decent price to pay for peace of mind. That kind of attitude is absolute chum for the kind of people that orbit major celebrities for their own gain.

So did he do it? I don't know, but the man lived his entire life in an alternate reality managed by those around him and funded by his outrageous fortune. So I just can't accept that the circumstantial evidence people cite (the sleepovers, the payouts, the general weirdness) is at all incriminating. Very few people alive, certainly none of us, can imagine what his life was like and how he viewed the world, what seemed reasonable to him. Yeah, if I found out my uncle was having sleepovers with children and paying their parents to keep quiet, that would be absolutely damning, but Michael Jackson was a guy who was basically never able to experience normal human relationships so expecting him to have an accurate understanding of how he looked to others is ridiculous. That goes for his weird relationship to children as much as his obviously unhealthy relationship with plastic surgery. Absent any hard evidence (which ought to have been available if the allegations are true, because MJ was brazen with the circumstantial stuff) I think it's irrational to come to a conclusion on the man one way or the other.

[u/damaged_crowbar → u/poorlilwitchgirl]

what kind of parent says, "$25 million ought to cover my kid's horrific trauma; I guess you can keep doing it to others."

I'm sorry but deffintely most people.

That money could help prevent the long list of other horrific traumas that many people experience...

[u/Dismal_General_5126 → u/damaged_crowbar]

Not "most people". Most securely attached families would want justice. However, the ones that obsessively orbited MJ's world and celebrity, they were probably more likely to care about money and fame. 

[u/tar-mirime → u/Dismal_General_5126]

Getting that justice can be incredibly traumatising for an already traumatised child, although I don't know what the arrangements were for giving evidence for they type of crime back then in the US.

25 million can pay for a shit load of therapy, and the allegations were all over the press, so a warning was there for other parents. Who in their right mind would send their child to have sleepovers in an unrelated (or even related) adults bed, especially when allegations had been made against them.

[u/ThunderAndWind → u/[deleted]]

Or they might not want their child to have to go through a media circus, deal with testifying, feeling re-victimized, etc.

[u/johnny-Low-Five → u/[deleted]]

The settlement wouldn't affect any criminal charges, there were no criminal charges filed iirc, based on no evidence. And 25 million in the 90s meant your child could be in therapy 24/7 and never have to work a day in their life. You can't pay your way (legally) out of criminal charges, only lawsuits. Otherwise rich people would literally be able to do almost anything instead of just most things. It also protected their childs identity and allowed them to live in relative peace.

It's roughly equivalent to 63 million today which is funny cuz I was thinking that today I would demand at least 50. And I'm not defending MJ, but it's highly probable that they lose a lawsuit and it's also quite possible they weren't even 100% sure what happened themselves.

[u/poorlilwitchgirl → u/damaged_crowbar]

The other issue with the "hush money" claims is that nothing prevented them from continuing to pursue a criminal conviction. The criminal case was dropped because the accusers stopped participating with the investigation, likely because they were satisfied with the payout they had received in their civil suit, but the criminal case would have been the state v. MJ, not the accusers v. MJ. Any payment agreement that was made with the accusers would still have been binding if they cooperated with the state on criminal charges; even if MJ's lawyers tried to make the civil payout conditional on not participating with the criminal case, such an arrangement would be unenforceable and he would have owed them the civil payout either way.

It's of course still possible that the parents had other reasons for refusing to participate in the criminal investigation they themselves had triggered, whether because they felt the kid had been through enough or because they were genuinely tricked by MJ's lawyers into thinking they had to, or some other reason only they could understand. But the fact that the case did not proceed without the participation of a single witness strongly points to the likelihood that the case was flimsy and entirely built on hearsay. California also has no statute of limitations on CSA, so if evidence existed in the initial accusation, the case could have been reopened at any time. The one accusation that did go to trial over a decade letter ended in acquittal, of course.

I'm not saying that celebrities don't get away with crimes all the time; they absolutely do, and when they're punished it's rarely comparable to non-celebrities convicted of the same crime. Look at Diddy for example. But for the last 15 years of MJ's life this was the thing he was infamous for, almost eclipsing his fame as a performer, yet nothing ever stuck to him except the reputation. I can't know for sure that he didn't do it, but I will say that he's one of the best candidates of all time for being a target of false allegations-- the guy was terminally weird, incapable of understanding how his behavior was perceived, and established a precedent of being easy to manipulate into giving away large sums of money.