Michael was held to an unfair double standard with "They Don't Care About Us"

[Kanye East]

Think about it. John and Yoko made "Woman Is The N****r of the World", and were they strongarmed into censoring it? No.
Eminem and a bunch of other rappers constantly threw around words like "F****t" in their songs well into the 2010s.
So why was Michael singled out, when TDCAU was explicitly making a point against discrimination?

As someone who is half-Irish, half-American, and a citizen of both countries, I strongly suspect that if he had said "kick me, mick me" ("mick" being a slur for the Irish) instead, there would not have been nearly the level of controversy that there was, and he wouldn't have been strongarmed into changing it, despite the fact that the Irish and the Jewish are both white Westerners who have suffered from genocide (Great Famine, Cromwell, Holocaust) and persecution (in fact, both groups were not legally emancipated in Europe well into the 19th century). It's the double standard that really irritates me.

Anyone who bothered to actually read the lyrics would understand that Michael, a black man, was denouncing prejudice, the same way Bob Dylan, a Jewish man, denounced prejudice in the song "Hurricane", which used the word "n****r". You have here an exact parallel...a black man using a derogatory term for Jewish to denounce prejudice and a Jewish man using a derogatory term for black to denounce prejudice, yet only one of them was intentionally taken out of context.

 

[mj_frenzy]

Michael Jackson should have been more cautious before releasing these original lyrics because his target audience mostly consisted of teenagers who could have very easily misunderstood the song's context.

Also, one would say that given the fact that the singer was adamant about these original lyrics not being anti-Semitic because he was not a racist person (as he stated to the American journalist Diane Sawyer), then he should not have later re-recorded them and re-released them.

 

[Horrorlover656]

I like OP's username. Just saying.

 

[luis98]

When was he never held to a double standard?

 

[DuranDuran]

What does the 1970s got to do with the 1990s? Two different periods of time. If you go back to the 1920s, "coon" songs were popular and many old cartoons like Bugs Bunny has racist characters in them. Those old cartoons are not shown today and the companies don't release them on home video. You might see some on Youtube as "banned cartoons" in poor quality. Like Disney does not do anything with Song Of The South and the Sunflower scenes in Fantasia were edited out in the 1960s. The 1990s is post Tipper Gore & PMRC. The PMRC is why there are now parental advisory stickers on albums. Also in the early 1990s, there was outcry about gangsta rap lyrics and the song Cop Killer by Ice T's band Body Count. In the late 1980s, some record store owners were arrested for selling 2 Live Crew albums.

With the n-word, many black people call themselves that as a greeting and have for a long time. You can hear it in 1970s blaxploitation movies and a lot of hip hop songs today. I don't think Jewish people call themselves the k-word and Chinese people don't call themselves the c-word. The OP mentioned John Lennon. In the 1960s a lot of folks in the USA (especially in the South) burned Beatles records & merchandise because Lennon made a comment about Jesus Christ (that was taken out of context). In one place in Texas, The Beatles plane was shot at. The Beatles had a press conference where Lennon made an apology about this and to explain what he meant.

Here's a video from the 1950s

 

[Lightbringer]

Michael Jackson should have been more cautious before releasing these original lyrics because his target audience mostly consisted of teenagers who could have very easily misunderstood the song's context.

Also, one would say that given the fact that the singer was adamant about these original lyrics not being anti-Semitic because he was not a racist person (as he stated to the American journalist Diane Sawyer), then he should not have later re-recorded them and re-released them.

He did that to please his record company and the media outrage that sparked citizen outrage, not because MJ was wrong initially. Sometimes you have to be smart and back down even if you are right - and this was one of these occasions! Once the snowball has started moving its impossible to stop, better to move out of the way!

 

[mj_frenzy]

He did that to please his record company and the media outrage that sparked citizen outrage, not because MJ was wrong initially. Sometimes you have to be smart and back down even if you are right - and this was one of these occasions! Once the snowball has started moving its impossible to stop, better to move out of the way!

Recording and releasing these original and controversial lyrics was apparently a way for him to gain media/citizen outrage.

Note that Michael Jackson was known to seek media/citizen outrage whenever he wanted to boost sales of his albums or ticket sales of his upcoming concerts.

For example, he also did a similar thing (in 1991) with the release of his black panther controversial video segment.

Right after getting what he wanted (media/citizen outrage), he later issued an apology.

 

[dam2040]

The censorship was BS. Simple

 

[R1chard]

So why was Michael singled out,

To be honest, this didn't happen.

MJ wasn't singled out. What actually happened was one TV host asked one question about it in one interview, then everybody promptly forgot about it and carried on with their lives.

It's only in the heads of tabloid-reading Americans that this was ever an issue. It wasn't a real thing.

 

[Kanye East]

With the n-word, many black people call themselves that as a greeting and have for a long time. You can hear it in 1970s blaxploitation movies and a lot of hip hop songs today. I don't think Jewish people call themselves the k-word and Chinese people don't call themselves the c-word. The OP mentioned John Lennon. In the 1960s a lot of folks in the USA (especially in the South) burned Beatles records & merchandise because Lennon made a comment about Jesus Christ (that was taken out of context). In one place in Texas, The Beatles plane was shot at. The Beatles had a press conference where Lennon made an apology about this and to explain what he meant.

The point is that he was making a statement against bigotry, the same way, say, Macklemore did with "Same Love", when he said "Call each other f*gg*ts behind the keys of a message board". "Same Love" was 2 decades after TDCAU.

Some black people call themselves n*ggA as a greeting, but not n*ggER, which is John and Yoko used.

 

[@mjfanatic777]

maybe he just didn't want to upset anybody (or the press) so he censored out the word. simple as that. no need to over complicate some things
: /

 

[DuranDuran]

Some black people call themselves n*ggA as a greeting, but not n*ggER, which is John and Yoko used.

The "a" is a hip hop era spelling, like "def" & "boyz". Before that like with blaxploitation it's "er". It's even in old TV sitcoms.

 

[Spaceship]

He should have said "Boo me, sue me" and "kick me, strike me".

Using anti-Semitic slurs in a pop song is just stupid, regardless of the intention.

 

[SoS]

I have to defend MJ here, his right to express himself just as anyone who wants to make "derogatory" phrases in their music as in examples above, MJ couldn't peacefully do it because it had to pass through them and they took it personal rather than seeing it as a creative reflection of the artist's personal lense.

Michael was an honest soul and he wrote a song, period.

If there is anything anti-semetic (as compared to things done that are anti-black) it would have to be an intentional interpretation they made personal and got on MJ about using an age old expression used by blacks from communities that had what were commonly called, "Jew stores" in black neighborhoods during the time that MJ was coming along, whites of various origins were given financial advantages in their arrival to America (not completely unlike what's going on now) and in the case of Jews, for having stores in these communities and the tendency of store owners was to get as much money for something as humanly possible for certain things, which would cause them to initiate a negotiation which is the key word for what "Jew me" means. It really for black people was just a short hand way of describing a negotiation experience. No different than stating a fact of an event. Its not antisemetic or anti anything.

edit: Furthermore, it is apples and oranges to compare with the word ni**er (since everyone's offended by it except black people lol make it make sense) simply because of the contextual distinction.

Ni**er was intended by racists to be anti-black. "Jew" as a verb ie. "jew me" refers to a function. It would be more comparable to "cracker" which is mischaracterized as being about the color of saltines when it had no origins in racism's ''colorism'' what-so-ever, rather it was the universal sound the field slaves made to eachother when they saw the person coming on the horse holding that whip.....which makes the sound: "KRRKH!" because it chamaflouged the fact that they were warning eachother to perk up before you get that sound "cracked" across your back. Its not pretty but its how the road was paved to here. Sometimes context is everything.

I think the real problem was they didn't feel comfortable sanctioning it since it made a reference to them................period and it is afterall their 'house' so .

 

[Kanye East]

He should have said "Boo me, sue me" and "kick me, strike me".

Using anti-Semitic slurs in a pop song is just stupid, regardless of the intention.

No worse than Bob Dylan saying "n*gger" in "Hurricane" or John and Yoko making "Woman is the N*gger of the World".

Michael was constantly mistreated and held to a double standard by the media, Sony, etc...

 

[DuranDuran]

No worse than Bob Dylan saying "n*gger" in "Hurricane" or John and Yoko making "Woman is the N*gger of the World".

Michael was constantly mistreated and held to a double standard by the media, Sony, etc...

Mike was protested by Jewish organizations, John & Bob were not protested by Black people. That's the difference. I don't think many Black people listened to Bob Dylan in the first place, and I don't think Dylan got a lot of mainstream Top 40 radio airplay. So his song is not as widely known. The Richard Pryor record used the same word and that came out around the same time as John's song. Richard's record was in the Top 10 albums in Billboard too. It's like Kanye West lost some endorsement deals when he made comments about Jews. Yet, nothing happened to Kayne, when a few years before that he said that slavery (in the USA) was a choice (by the slaves). There are actual racist records by the 1960s country singers Johnny Rebel & Colonel Sharecropper. But they're obscure and didn't get much publicity.

It's still 2 different time periods. None of that would go down as well if released today. A show like All In The Family would not be made today either. Because they're not PC enough for modern audiences. Even some current Disney movies are edited or banned in some places like China & the Middle East. Notice those movie posters I posted above. The titles were changed on the more recent home video versions. Also on those TV clips I posted, on the offical uploads by Sony, the N-word parts are left off. Those clips above are fan uploads.

Quentin Tarantino has been criticized by some Black people because he has a lot of n-word in his movies. But that's only because he's white. They don't say the same about rap lyrics & Black made movies like Boyz In The Hood. Many Black rappers do not like that non-Black people at their concerts say all of the lyrics. But that doesn't make much sense to me. People always sing the songs at concerts, whatever kind of music it is. If rappers don't want the non-Black fans to repeat the n-word, then don't put it there in the first place. In my everyday life, I've seen some younger Asians & Mexicans call each other the n-word. But they don't use the derogatory terms that are actually about their own ethnicities.

 

[SmoothGangsta]

MJ was wrong with this one fr.

 

[innuendo141]

I don't think the "k*ke" thing would have been such an issue had he said "n****r in jail" instead of "brother in jail". If you're gonna go all in with the slurs, don't just use one.

It doesn't bother me either way. I understand what the message was, and even as a child I understood the point he was trying to make.

 

[DuranDuran]

I don't think the "k*ke" thing would have been such an issue had he said "n****r in jail" instead of "brother in jail". If you're gonna go all in with the slurs, don't just use one.

It doesn't bother me either way. I understand what the message was, and even as a child I understood the point he was trying to make.

Well on the same album, there's This Time Around where Biggie says the n-word. Prince's band (New Power Generation) released an album called Gold N---- in 1993. It was produced by Prince and he sings on some of the songs. Nothing was said about it. On Prince's own 1992 symbol album, the n-word is on it and on his 1980s "Black Album", there's a mostly instrumental track called 2 Nigs United 4 West Compton. Even Steve Wonder said it on a couple of tracks in the early 1970s, one of them called Sweet Little Girl.

 

[Moviefan2k4]

I actually found an unedited version of the HIStory album at a music store when I lived in Dallas, around 2010. All the text on the box and in the lyrics book were English, though the discs themselves appeared to have some Spanish writing, which I thought was odd. Still, all the songs on that release were in full English audio with no censoring, so as a longtime fan I thought that was cool.

 

[Kanye East]

I don't think the "k*ke" thing would have been such an issue had he said "n****r in jail" instead of "brother in jail". If you're gonna go all in with the slurs, don't just use one.

It doesn't bother me either way. I understand what the message was, and even as a child I understood the point he was trying to make.

Would that have worked, though? I could never tell if he was saying "throw the brother in jail" or "throw your brother in jail", i.e. if he was using "brother" to mean a black man or if he was using it to mean someone's actual brother. (I also don't know if he says "black man, black male" or "black man, blackmail".

 

[Andymachine]

I think what did not help was when his mother Katherine said "hitlers biggest make was not killing enough Jews" . MJ was not a huge fan of Jews either but i put that down to his upbringing. He was however friends with Steven Spielberg despite the rubbish about of him having a voodoo doll of him about the whole Hook thing. It is all very sad painting MJ as an anti semetic again mostly by the UK tabloids , the US ran with it also but nowhere near as the disgusting UK tabloids before they were given new rules about what they cannot do . Back in the 80s and 90s , "real papers" made the National Enquirer look the Times.

 

[Mister_Jay_Tee]

This song is secretly MJs greatest regardless of the controversy. The production is immaculate, the vocals are pristine, the value and artistry of it transcends it's era. The poignancy only adds to its actual appeal.

And it's even more amazing I can repeat this two more times on the same album.

 

[Arklove]

I actually found an unedited version of the HIStory album at a music store when I lived in Dallas, around 2010. All the text on the box and in the lyrics book were English, though the discs themselves appeared to have some Spanish writing, which I thought was odd. Still, all the songs on that release were in full English audio with no censoring, so as a longtime fan I thought that was cool.

Nice! My original album that I bought on the day of release was stolen from my car about 10 years ago

 

[R1chard]

I don't think the "k*ke" thing would have been such an issue had he said "n****r in jail" instead of "brother in jail". If you're gonna go all in with the slurs, don't just use one.

It doesn't bother me either way. I understand what the message was, and even as a child I understood the point he was trying to make.

Here's the thing - this word isn't nearly as bad as y'all are trying to make out.

Like, in the UK it's not a word that's ever heard or understood. I was 18 when HIStory came out, having been around Jews my whole life, and I'd never actually heard the word at that point, not a single time, much less had I been conditioned to take offence from it. I had no idea about it until they pointed it out on an American TV show I watched.

And to this day, 29 years later, I've literally never heard anybody use the word since. It's simply a non-issue. Combine that with the fact that it's such a fast-moving song, that indiscriminately rages against everybody, and I'm now at the point where I simply look down on people that try to bring it up.

 

[applehead1988]

Think about it. John and Yoko made "Woman Is The N****r of the World", and were they strongarmed into censoring it? No.
Eminem and a bunch of other rappers constantly threw around words like "F****t" in their songs well into the 2010s.
So why was Michael singled out, when TDCAU was explicitly making a point against discrimination?

As someone who is half-Irish, half-American, and a citizen of both countries, I strongly suspect that if he had said "kick me, mick me" ("mick" being a slur for the Irish) instead, there would not have been nearly the level of controversy that there was, and he wouldn't have been strongarmed into changing it, despite the fact that the Irish and the Jewish are both white Westerners who have suffered from genocide (Great Famine, Cromwell, Holocaust) and persecution (in fact, both groups were not legally emancipated in Europe well into the 19th century). It's the double standard that really irritates me.

Anyone who bothered to actually read the lyrics would understand that Michael, a black man, was denouncing prejudice, the same way Bob Dylan, a Jewish man, denounced prejudice in the song "Hurricane", which used the word "n****r". You have here an exact parallel...a black man using a derogatory term for Jewish to denounce prejudice and a Jewish man using a derogatory term for black to denounce prejudice, yet only one of them was intentionally taken out of context.

I just can't get over your name

 

[Moviefan2k4]

I think what did not help was when his mother Katherine said "Hitler's biggest mistake was not killing enough Jews"...

The notion that she would ever say such a thing nano-shocks the hell out of me...especially since she was raised as a Baptist. Could this statement have anything to do with her later conversion to the Jehovah's Witnesses? I'm not sure what that so-called "church" thinks of Orthodox Jews.

 

[Andymachine]

The notion that she would ever say such a thing nano-shocks the hell out of me...especially since she was raised as a Baptist. Could this statement have anything to do with her later conversion to the Jehovah's Witnesses? I'm not sure what that so-called "church" thinks of Orthodox Jews.

Very likely but a lot of Christian demoninations , felt the same way , as disgusting as it is unfortunately they did say things like that.

 

[Andymachine]

Also MJ himself made references to the Jews which i found shocking, despite the Rabbi Shumley guy . We all say silly things in life none of us are perfect and say silly things , but the Katherine i thing I very much believe . The JH "religion" is a very insular society . However in their case not so much . Does not change my opinion on MJ i will always love him but the rest of them meh...

 

[kreen]

For the longest time I thought the "kik* me, j*w me" lyric meant "I'm identifying with people who are called kik*s, or who are attacked because they're J*ws".

But thinking about it now, in the context of the song, and knowing that, in the black community, and especially in the world of black musicians, there is this phrase "you're j*wing me", which means "you're taking advantage of me financially", I think MJ might really have meant the words in a derogatory way against J*ws, meaning he cast himself as a black man being taken advantage of by J*wish record label executives and owners.

It's not very enlightened on MJ's part, but it does reflect a certain kind of antisemitism in the black community that comes from their impression of the world of business being dominated by white, J*wish people.