He likely did have vitiligo, but as far as I know, it doesn’t lighten all your skin gradually and evenly. I don’t know if he did do something about it on purpose. You’d think if he did, at least some other people with vitiligo might choose the same option…
But either way, I don’t begrudge him the choice if it was something he did to deal with vitiligo. Honestly, I don’t know if I would begrudge him the choice even if he didn’t have vitiligo. It would certainly be an odd choice, with some social consequences, but it would be his choice.
His skin changing to white was only part of it too, he also had plastic surgery to make his facial features shaped more in-line with facial features common to white skinned populaces. His nose infamously took too much work to get the way he wanted it and ended up with problems later. Could be entirely co-incidental that the plastic surgery he wanted happened to make him look more like someone that was born genetically white skinned…
But taken together, it does seem pretty likely he wanted to identify as white.
If that was the most noteworthy thing about him, people would probably have been upset for a while, but got over it at some point. I mean “Black Alien” has certain done more to purposefully change his appearance and while we see him pop up on the internet every now and then, we tend to go back to fogetting he exists between mentions.
But Michael Jackson is noteworthy for reasons that would hold just as much merit if that part of his life completely never happened.
I, for one, am not convinced of any of the pedophilia stuff, but alot of people are. To me, the descriptions of activities the kids gave sounds so much more like a stunted childhood than anything sexual. But, assuming they were true, it’s much closer, but still wouldn’t be the most noteworthy thing about him.
He was just that much better than the next closest musician. That he could get through both those news stories coming up all the time, and still have most people think positively of him.
He never identified as white, he was proud of being black. His facial surgeries weren’t about looking more white, but more beautiful, which due to white supremacy culture includes characteristics you could describe as white but not very accurately.
He used a skin whitening cream to even out his skin tone, because there was no skin darkening cream. It’s medically possible to destroy melanin but not to easily replace it. The vitiligo comes in in spots from my understanding.
His facial surgeries weren’t about looking more white, but more beautiful, which due to white supremacy culture includes characteristics you could describe as white but not very accurately.
Notable absolute completely irredeemable piece-of-shit Joe Jackson’s constant abuse of Michael, that also included comments about his looks, specifically his “black nose”, also had something to do with it.
His serious burns from a hairspray-accelerated fire while filming a video probably played a role in him having plastic surgeries. The footage is out there for those who need proof, there was a tragic lack of proper response in the moment to his hair catching fire.