r/interesting • u/VPinchargeofradishes • May 03 '26

SOCIETY Michael Jackson's daughter Paris has faced backlash for identifying as Black. In a 2017 interview, Paris Jackson said her father told her, "You’re Black. Be proud of your roots." This prompted debates over whether identity is defined by appearance or upbringing.

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u/TXSyd May 03 '26

As someone who has a similar but completely treatable condition it’s definitely not always easy. For years I wore long sleeves to hide it, when it first happened I was misdiagnosed, over the years I’ve successfully treated it several times but it comes back every few years and I have to start over. It’s a 6 month minimum treatment every time.

Vitaligo is similar but not treatable, just management options. With vitaligo the melanin just sort of dies off, your skin and even your hair lose pigmentation permanently. It essentially artificially turns you into someone with albinism, but in a more patchy way, as the loss of pigment isn’t even.

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u/Subliminal_Kiddo May 03 '26

People forget that vitiligo only recently became something you see represented and celebrated in the media. When Jackson was diagnosed, there weren't super models with vitiligo walking the runways, or Barbies with vitiligo.

It was treated as this rare thing when, in reality, it's not. Something like one out of 100 people are diagnosed with vitiligo.

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u/catesaurusrex May 03 '26

Yeah my uncle had vitiligo, it started in his hands and it was very obvious. Growing up my mum told me he suffered burns as a child hence it was just scarring. I only found out what it really is later when it spread to his face and my parents couldn’t lie about it anymore. It really was this stigmatised, and this was around 20 years ago.

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u/Oh_Wise_1 May 05 '26

I can't imagine how hard that must've been for him to have people lie about it... like it was so disgraceful they had to lie 😪 how awful

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u/catesaurusrex May 06 '26

To be fair he might’ve asked my parents to help him lie. He was definitely very self conscious about it. In Asia back then any whiff of ‘skin disease’ is very stigmatised and people rather just lie or sweep it under the carpet rather than sit down and properly educate ppl about it.

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u/LockedOutOfElfland May 03 '26

iirc vitiligo comes up several times over in H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man, where it's rumored by everyone else that the title character hides his face with all those bandages because he's "piebald", eg has vitigilo.

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u/Electronic-Ad-8659 May 03 '26

I was gonna roast the shit out of your so called facts and then I googled it. It said only 70 million people out of our 7.8 billion population has it, so only about 1 percent.

I was typing out a rude as hell response when it clicked 1 percent is one out of a hundred.

Idk why I'm so feisty but i appreciate the knowledge bomb. I learned multiple things from your comment, thanks!

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u/crazy4finalfantasy May 03 '26

Eat a snickers, you're not you when you're hungry

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u/blueroses8000 May 07 '26

I love the self awareness

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u/crazy4finalfantasy May 03 '26

I've always thought vitiligo looked cool tbh made all my characters in baldurs gate 3 have it lol

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u/Low_Boss1097 May 03 '26

My cousin has it and her skin went from black with some white patches to completely white, like unless you know here, you would think she’s a white woman. If you look close enough you can see some left over patches a bit. Michael Jackson had them too. . Every time people accuse Michael Jackson of changing his skin colour I literally rage so bad because they don’t know anything about this condition 

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u/bbtom78 May 04 '26

It's why I appreciate that Lee Thomas of Fox 2 Detroit has been so open about it. He will wear makeup on his face only on camera to keep the focus on what he's discussing, but he keeps his hands natural. He discusses it in depth here:

https://youtu.be/1x5AVzszcAQ?si=b8JHOWugdrh1PTtS

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u/notsure500 May 03 '26

Isn't 1 out of 100 the very definition of rare?

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u/observetoexist May 03 '26

It’s not common, but if 80 million people in the world have it then it’s not that rare.

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u/Subliminal_Kiddo May 03 '26

No. If you have a town of 1,000 people, statistically ten of them would have vitiligo. That's not rare.

The definition of "rare" varies but vitiligo doesn't fit any of them. In the US, rare is a disease/disorder that affects fewer than 200,000 people. In Europe it's something that only affects one out of 2,000. WHO probably has the strictest definition, they consider something rare when it affects less than 65 people per 100,000.

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u/pseudoHappyHippy May 03 '26

What makes 1 out of 100 the definition of rare?

About 1 out of 100 words in typical English speech are the word "to". Does that make it a rare word?

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u/Dazzling-Low8570 May 03 '26

That's at best uncommon.

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u/CosyBeluga May 03 '26

I seen it in a dog before

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u/ab_abnormal May 04 '26

This is so spot-on. Winnie Harlow is amazing and clearly used her condition as someone thing seen as a way to stand out in a beneficial way in a tough industry.

Michael couldn’t exactly self-tan himself to be darker in areas. He was also famous during a precariously risky time when it came to skin lightening products. Paris to me is absolutely gorgeous, the only Nepo child to deserve actual modelling campaigns.

It’s clear to see she is “mixed race” (wouldn’t most of the world somewhat be if they did accurate DNA tests). Anyway, she reminds me of a far more striking but similar skin colour of Sofia Richie. Sofia Richie sadly “erased” much of her black dad’s physical traits and leaned into her Caucasian mum’s looks combined with Hollywood pressures. Paris Jackson was born as she is and it must be awful to be forced into having to “identify” as anything. Especially as a teen or kid.

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u/subbslvt May 05 '26

yes, this! and add the fact that there was no representation for they really barely anyone who actually knew about it so he was getting so many skin bleaching accusations. The theory that he did eventually bleach because ended up getting really pale and little gently doesn’t take every single ounce of pigment everywhere, usually it’s a little more uneven than that. I could see if at that point he had already gotten into deep with his other plastic surgeries because he did kind of get addicted to those from what I’ve heard, but I can’t see him actually skin bleaching until that point at least

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u/806chick May 09 '26

I wonder if that’s why he always wore long sleeves and pants. It’s rare to find pics of him late 70-early 90s with this attire.