“Too big to cancel”: can we still listen to Michael Jackson?

All forced conversations in America about race, sex and celebrity are inevitably framed by horror and absurdity, history and the modern day. Because of this, many of my people – as in American born Blackfolk – refuse to countenance moral or legal absolutes when allegations of our stars committing sexual assault hit the news. They instead invoke a form of mathematical objectivity in pursuit of American democracy’s most impossible dream: a racialised level playing field. In this accounting, Bill Cosby and R Kelly aren’t defended despite victim-testimony and compelling evidence, but because not enough equally evil-ass white men have suffered enough public shaming for their crimes.

Relevant: Spike Lee‘s documentary about Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall.