(Note: I’m aware of the derailing-potential of this thread, but I’m really interested in understanding what is meant in songs I listen to, so I’d ask people to really focus on staying on the topic of the song, music/culture, but avoid going unnecessarily into political debates.)
The use of the word "skinhead" in "They don’t care about us" has bugged me for a long time.
I used to be close to local punk movements… not those from 1977 punk-mania, rather the survivors from the early 2000s… and there were skinheads in there. They were nice people who had nothing to do with the public image they had through the media.
Some useful contextual clarifications:
Punks often stand for values that are very much compatible with those of Michael… things like peace, tolerance, anti-racism, ecology… Flavours are different, punk expresses more critical thinking, but a wide range of values, those that seem like the most important, are actually close. Considering some songs on "Dangerous" and many more song on "HIStory", from a strictly personal point of view, I guess I wouldn’t see a big problem placing them next to punk bands discographies… *
And why were there skinheads then? The first skinheads were influenced by black Jamaican culture (and apparently other cultures like West Indian culture), or maybe were they actually black Jamaican (this varies depending on sources**). So they were absolutely not racist. They usually were working class leftists. Initially associated music styles were ska and reggae.
The far-right neo-Nazis white supremacist skinhead that seemed to be the popular image of the skinhead in the 90s and onwards were something we actually considered as some drift-away evolution at some point, or was it appropriation by people who simply had nothing to do with it? Some people would call them "boneheads" instead.
In "They don’t care about us", Michael sings: Skinhead, deadhead, Everybody, gone bad
I don’t know the word "deadhead", apparently it may mean "a boring or unenterprising person" … Or according to some other definitions: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Deadhead ) a movement derived from the hippies and… "fans of the Grateful Dead"? Would make some sense next to "skinhead", but I’m not too sure if they actually went bad or disappeared, just no idea.
And in his explanations after the censorship of "They don’t care about us", MJ says "(…
I am the voice of the accused and the attacked. I am the voice of everyone. I am the skinhead, I am the Jew, I am the black man, I am the white man. (…"
I’m already not sure there if that means that “the skinhead” are accused and attacked independently from the other entries in this list, so they would be victims of a bad reputation… or if that means that “the skinhead are accused of attacking the Jew” and that Michael is kind of calling for peace between any attacker and any attacked…
For long, I have been hesitating between two ways to understand this, like:
- Was Michael aware of the differences between the origins of the skinheads and their public image and "corrupted" evolution?
I think that would not be impossible as this is something you can learn from interest in some kind of music history (ska/reggae/…, non-us black history, history of racist movements…
And I remember Michael in some interviews stating that he had wide interests in history and awareness in any kind of music anywhere in the world.
And because he associates them with "the voice of the accused and the attacked".
In that case, does he mean that the skinhead movement is victim of being "hijacked" by the white supremacists and/or the media?
- Or maybe is he just not aware of all that, he sees skinheads as they could be seen in through mainstream media. And then that would mean that the victims there are rather (young) people who get "recruited" in these movements? Or yet people being victim of skinhead racism?
If there wasn’t MJ’s quote about the censorship of the songs, I would have thought that the second hypothesis was more likely. But considering the quote, I’d say both hypotheses have similar weights for me… yet still very unclear what he had in mind.
----
* But I don’t, they’re actually chronologically ordered with other MJ’s albums. And no! "Bad" I don’t think that "Bad" fits in there. I know that the jacket was actually bought at an actual "punk" shop, but that’s just clothing. My impression is that "Bad" was mostly MJ trying to overcome some Care Bear image he got from "Beat it" through saying that you can be a good person and be strong at the same time, and capitalizing on some leather jacket fashion. While for "Dangerous" and "HIStory", Michael seems like he completely accepted that he can be a Care Bear and be strong at the same time and that it doesn’t really matter and he became much more freely expressive and critical with what he had to say about the world around him, and the world in general.
** Fetched more info from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqCJBwIYDys around 01:58, "Rude Boys (I forgot about them) were the second generation of Jamaican emigrants, …" and around 00:30 "Rude Boys and skinheads, two separated cultures which(… converged" (this video actually makes a lot of things more precise, or actually shows how confused things are)
(And, contextual bonus if you watch this video, look closely at the wall behind the guy at 19:41 , there’s something you should recognise.)
The use of the word "skinhead" in "They don’t care about us" has bugged me for a long time.
I used to be close to local punk movements… not those from 1977 punk-mania, rather the survivors from the early 2000s… and there were skinheads in there. They were nice people who had nothing to do with the public image they had through the media.
Some useful contextual clarifications:
Punks often stand for values that are very much compatible with those of Michael… things like peace, tolerance, anti-racism, ecology… Flavours are different, punk expresses more critical thinking, but a wide range of values, those that seem like the most important, are actually close. Considering some songs on "Dangerous" and many more song on "HIStory", from a strictly personal point of view, I guess I wouldn’t see a big problem placing them next to punk bands discographies… *
And why were there skinheads then? The first skinheads were influenced by black Jamaican culture (and apparently other cultures like West Indian culture), or maybe were they actually black Jamaican (this varies depending on sources**). So they were absolutely not racist. They usually were working class leftists. Initially associated music styles were ska and reggae.
The far-right neo-Nazis white supremacist skinhead that seemed to be the popular image of the skinhead in the 90s and onwards were something we actually considered as some drift-away evolution at some point, or was it appropriation by people who simply had nothing to do with it? Some people would call them "boneheads" instead.
In "They don’t care about us", Michael sings: Skinhead, deadhead, Everybody, gone bad
I don’t know the word "deadhead", apparently it may mean "a boring or unenterprising person" … Or according to some other definitions: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Deadhead ) a movement derived from the hippies and… "fans of the Grateful Dead"? Would make some sense next to "skinhead", but I’m not too sure if they actually went bad or disappeared, just no idea.
And in his explanations after the censorship of "They don’t care about us", MJ says "(…
I am the voice of the accused and the attacked. I am the voice of everyone. I am the skinhead, I am the Jew, I am the black man, I am the white man. (…" I’m already not sure there if that means that “the skinhead” are accused and attacked independently from the other entries in this list, so they would be victims of a bad reputation… or if that means that “the skinhead are accused of attacking the Jew” and that Michael is kind of calling for peace between any attacker and any attacked…
For long, I have been hesitating between two ways to understand this, like:
- Was Michael aware of the differences between the origins of the skinheads and their public image and "corrupted" evolution?
I think that would not be impossible as this is something you can learn from interest in some kind of music history (ska/reggae/…
, non-us black history, history of racist movements…And I remember Michael in some interviews stating that he had wide interests in history and awareness in any kind of music anywhere in the world.
And because he associates them with "the voice of the accused and the attacked".
In that case, does he mean that the skinhead movement is victim of being "hijacked" by the white supremacists and/or the media?
- Or maybe is he just not aware of all that, he sees skinheads as they could be seen in through mainstream media. And then that would mean that the victims there are rather (young) people who get "recruited" in these movements? Or yet people being victim of skinhead racism?
If there wasn’t MJ’s quote about the censorship of the songs, I would have thought that the second hypothesis was more likely. But considering the quote, I’d say both hypotheses have similar weights for me… yet still very unclear what he had in mind.
----
* But I don’t, they’re actually chronologically ordered with other MJ’s albums. And no! "Bad" I don’t think that "Bad" fits in there. I know that the jacket was actually bought at an actual "punk" shop, but that’s just clothing. My impression is that "Bad" was mostly MJ trying to overcome some Care Bear image he got from "Beat it" through saying that you can be a good person and be strong at the same time, and capitalizing on some leather jacket fashion. While for "Dangerous" and "HIStory", Michael seems like he completely accepted that he can be a Care Bear and be strong at the same time and that it doesn’t really matter and he became much more freely expressive and critical with what he had to say about the world around him, and the world in general.
** Fetched more info from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqCJBwIYDys around 01:58, "Rude Boys (I forgot about them) were the second generation of Jamaican emigrants, …" and around 00:30 "Rude Boys and skinheads, two separated cultures which(…
converged" (this video actually makes a lot of things more precise, or actually shows how confused things are)(And, contextual bonus if you watch this video, look closely at the wall behind the guy at 19:41 , there’s something you should recognise.)