Michael Jackson's Ability to Break Barriers
John White, author of the forthcoming book: Barack Obama's America, provides a series of views on American society.
In 1991, Michael Jackson released the song "Black or White." In the music video accompanying the song, male and female faces morphed into all shades of different colors. The Reagan era had ended only a few years before, but the U. S. was still a mostly white country. Jackson had transcended a racial barrier by becoming the first black
artist to penetrate MTV. Today, whites are fast becoming a minority and the morphing of the face of America is happening thanks to an increase interracial marriages (something that was still uncommon in 1991). The Jackson video prophesized the coming of a new era in U. S. politics, one in which the binary concept of race (black/white) no longer really holds. (Indeed, defining race constitutes something of a slippery slope.)
Watch the music video on YouTube.
Learn more about Barack Obama's America here.
