ONCE FOR ALL, OPEN YOUR EYES AND YOUR MIND, AND DON'T SAY "I DIDN'T KNOW" ANYMORE...READ!"I want to talk to you about Michael Jackson and I don't really know how to do it, I know, I know, by the mere mention of his name, you already sneer. You find the character ridiculous and you make fun of this black man like everyone else disguised as white.
However, what I have to say to you is tragic. I am going to reveal to you something that you do not know and which will perhaps make you see the guy with a little more compassion.
So Michael Jackson, after several years of absence, tries a return whose success is not guaranteed. Last Friday in New York, all those who could approach him made fun of him by claiming that he was whiter than ever.
Now, I know why this is so. Several years ago, Jackson's doctor gave a press conference in which he claimed that Jackson suffered from vitiligo. Since nobody knew what he was talking about, we never heard of him again.
But I knew what he was talking about. Indeed, I too have been afflicted with this disease called vitiligo, since my birth.
The disease is neither suffering, nor fatal, nor contagious. But it can have a dramatic side.
To simplify, let's say that vitiligo causes an absence of pigmentation of the skin. That’s why I am whiter than white and why I have white hair for a long time. That’s why I burn in the sun in less than 5 minutes.
Today, I do not care but for several years, I was traumatized. It is that the disease progresses. First, we notice nothing. Then appear on the skin white patches that we try to hide. Then the hairs turn white, then the hair. A few years later, we are white from head to toe.
I got dressed long from head to neck and I dyed myself, eyebrows, eyelashes and hair. Then when I was old enough to have "normal" white hair, I moved on. Without forgetting the horrors of this horrible transition.
Michael Jackson suffers from vitiligo. Michael Jackson is black. I lived a drama, Michael Jackson lives a tragedy. For me, vitiligo was white on white, not enough to whip a cat, for him it is white on black, white plates on a black background. The horror, the temptation, no doubt, of suicide. Jackson tries all the remedies (there are none), tries all the therapies (there is none), he resorts to plastic surgery, which does not help, he makes up, everyone laugh.
He is becoming more and more white. Then it is all white. He is the object of all jokes and all insults. His black fellow citizens accuse him of wanting to be white and betraying his race.
Jackson disappeared for several years. Now he is back and said to be whiter than ever. We laugh, we laugh, we insult. Not me!
I don't need anything and I'm not asking you for anything. But now that you know, I would be grateful if you laugh a little less when you think of Michael Jackson. "Pierre Bourgault, Journalist, university professor, columnist and radio presenter, Montreal, news, Sep 9, 2001
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