Dr. Michael Eric Dyson on Michael Jackson : ‘A Chocolate Genius’ That Evoked Emotions Beyond His Age
Dr. Michael Eric Dyson was recently on PBS’ Tavis Smiley Show where he spoke about the lasting legacy of Michael Joseph Jackson on society, pop music, race, and history in the United States. Dyson makes it clear that by nature of how much harder Michael Jackson had to work as a Black artist in America, comparisons between the King of Pop and the King of Rock and Roll will always inherently be skewed largely in favor of Michael Joseph Jackson, who had to work harder to become apart of the American culture than the sexy white man singing the songs of the marginalized Black communities:
“Elvis had a step stool if you will, to success because he came from the dominant culture, they identified with him. Michael Jackson had to come further and go deeper into the pit of possibility of American democracy and of cultural expression. His music was not seen as an intimate and organic development of American society. As a result of that, he had to challenge the white supremacist barriers that kept him from being even recognized as a human being number one and then the art form that was usually commodified and appropriated by the dominant white culture and then used to its advantage. Michael Jackson already in his music took back the prerogative of expressing an African American identity by an artist in the twentieth century. So that when you see Michael and Elvis on the same track, I think ultimately, Michael Jackson begins to moonwalk away from Elvis Presley‘s wiggle and he begins to one of the most profound articulations of human possibility that we’ve seen in the twentieth century.”