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Hi!. I'm Straight Arrow
This is my second YouTube video.
After I uploaded my first YouTube video,
I was struck with a fit of giggles.
I thought about how my video was the nadir of the lousy,
and yet I was discussing the work of a man whose short films were the epitome of perfection.
The irony of it really got to me,
but I'm doing it again.
I can only hope
that my videos are so-o-o lousy
that they get a certain cult following,
sort of like "The Rocky Horror Picture show."
You know, though, with only 6 views
that I'm not there yet.
Maybe this one'll do it!
You have to dream big.
'Course it might help if I were to down load video editing software heh-heh-heh.
so I could put in exciting images or something, like
other people do, but no-o, I'm too cheap, I.
have only this camera, hee-hee
Today, I'm going to talk about Michael Jackson and race.
Race is a really sensitive topic in my country, the United States of America.
We had a president not too long ago whose name was Bill Clinton,
and towards the end of his term, his second term in office,
he announced a goal of starting a national dialog on the topic of race.
Now for those of you who are old enough to remember this,
he was notably unsuccessful
in starting this very important national dialog, and the reason that he was unsuccessful
was because he started a national dialog on the topic of "What is Sex?"
and, despite the sensitivity of *that* topic, it was
obviously much easier for us to discuss
that the much more difficult and squeamish-inducing topic of race and
for those of you who are old enough to remember, you may
recall that we were all sitting around discussing the use of cigars .. OK
That was more entertaining and easier for us than race.
So I think Michael Jackson has presented us with a unique opportunity
to attempt to start the dialog that President Clinton really so correctly pointed out as being important for us.
Now I am going to start by talking a little bit about my race.
I suppose in looking at me you may notice that I'm white.
OK my mother was an old line WASP.
And she could trace her ancestry back to Elder Brewster on The Mayflower
and my father's ancestry was Central European Jewish and he
actually came here as a refugee from Hitler from Germany
and at the time my parents got married that was a mixed marriage
OK, that was really challenging for my mother. Her father had been extremely anti-Semitic.
I firmly believe that had he not died prematurely of a smoking induced heart attack
I would not exist,
because I don't think she would have dared to marry my father if her father had still been alive.
As much as I hate cigarettes, I believe I owe my existence to them.
and, as a result of my parents' mixed marriage, I believe that I lack ethnicity
except possibly American.
I am a melting pot child
and I believe that Michael Jackson was similar in some ways
that he actually lacked race
much as I lack ethnicity.
Now if I had purchased the video editing software
I could at this moment start flashing pictures in front of you
I might flash pictures of, for instance, Joseph Jackson, Michael Jackson's father,
Barack Obama, Barack Obama's father, Barack Obama's mother,
but you can go out on YouTube, Google, whatever and you can
find pictures of these people and you can see
that Barack Obama, who is a noted biracial person,
has a skin color somewhere between the skin colors of his African father and his white mother;
but if you look at a picture of Joseph Jackson, youll
see that his skin color is actually lighter
than that of Barack Obama and that his eyes are light in color. I think
Michael Jackson actually said in an interview that his
father's eyes were blue
and therefore we can see that Michael Jackson's father is actually part white maybe mostly white
and Michael Jackson's mother has been widely reported to have been part Cherokee
and possibly even to have straight hair.
and if you look at her you can see that she has Native American features,
so MIchael Jackson was himself tri-racial.
He had white, African, and Native American ancestry.
Of course his youthful appearance was quite African, but,
as we know, it was notably removed from him by a
combination of disease, plastic surgery, wigs, and makeup
and clothing, too
and he also, though, when he had children, had children
who had the races of their mothers, and
and many people suspected,
even though Michael Jackson publicly stated in an interview that they were his biological children,
many people suspected that they were not.
yet, after Michael Jackson's death,
we saw photographs of Prince
You could clearly see that he had vitiligo on his skin
which caused, I think, most of us to feel that Michael
Jackson had been telling us the truth about these children, that they
were really his biological children and that they had the races of their mothers
the white children [children of the white mother] having a white appearance
the child of a Hispanic mother having a Hispanic appearance
Janet Jackson said that Michael said that Blanket's mother was Hispanic, and then
there is a young man who claims to be Michael Jackson's son, though we don't know if that's true or not
and he has an African appearance, presumably because he had a mother with an African appearance
So Michael Jackson actually lacked race on a cellular level
He was unable to supply a racial appearance to his children.
His children had the racial appearances of their mothers
This was because, like me, Michael Jackson was a child of the Melting Pot.
Now, it is my understanding that most African Americans have mixed race ancestry, or many do
and it's seldom discussed.
I think white people have trouble discussing it
because white people are uncomfortable with mixed race relationships
and I think African Americans often have trouble discussing this, too,
because, while they may have every reason to be proud of their slave ancestors,
because -- while those people suffered, they also survived, and they
contributed positively to the building of our nation --
African American people have every reason to be a little uncomfortable with their white ancesters, many
of whom were rapists, who were slaveholders who *** their slaves ...
I think it's uncomfortable to think about descending from rapists
Although I have to say myself, being a person of Jewish ancestry, many
Jewish people have a European appearance, even
though Jewish people originally came from the Middle East
because many Jewish women were ***
Similarly, if you go to Eastern Europe, particularly
in the Ukraine area, or something, you'll find a lot of white people with Asian
features, because some of their ancesters were *** by Genghis Khan and his hoards.
so having different mixed racial appearances because of *** is
not at all unusual in the world.
I think we should become more comfortable with the idea that
yeah, we can have some acestors who are rapists and it's ok.
We can still be ok, if that's the case.
I think Michael Jackson, because of his high profile, and
all the controversy around him
has given us a really unique opportunity
to discuss these issues
That discussion could be really positive for us
to come to accept each other
here in this country as all -- many of us anyway -- products of the Melting Pot
to accept ourselves as being more similar to each other than different
could be something that could come out of that dialog.
I hope that all of the controversy about Michael Jackson and race
can have that positive effect of getting us into that dialog that
President Clinton failed to initiate
So thank you for listening and heal the world.