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Questions followed cosmetic changes

By Jesse Washington Associated Press

Michael Jackson had a complicated relationship with his blackness.

In 40 years in the public eye, Jackson's skin lightened, his hair changed from Afro to bone-straight perm, and his wide nose was surgically whittled down to a point. His music went from R&B to pure pop and beyond. His close friends included Elizabeth Taylor and Nancy Reagan.

By the time his last smash hit, Black or White, was released in 1991, many people wondered if the song title applied to Jackson himself.

But those who knew him well say he always maintained his black identity. And as a trailblazer for a new breed of global multimedia stars, he helped create an era in which race was a piece, rather than the definition, of a person.

"I think that Michael really, in his career, just transcended race. His work and his life was sort of about undefining race," said Bill Bottrell, who co-produced Black or White and worked closely with Jackson from 1986 into the early '90s.

Yet the wider Michael Jackson's fame spread, the whiter his appearance became.

Jackson said he had vitiligo, a disease that produces white splotches on the skin. He compensated with treatments and makeup that turned his overall complexion lighter, to an extent never seen before in a black celebrity. Serial surgeries kept altering his facial features.

"He became much more ambivalent in the minds of many African-Americans," said commentator and community activist Earl Ofari Hutchinson. "His music, his whole change in appearance, his fan base became much more eclectic. You just didn't see African-Americans identifying with him."

Teddy Riley, a producer on Jackson's 1991 Dangerous album, said Jackson frequently discussed his cosmetic changes. "I'm quite sure if Michael could have done it all over again, he would not have done that," Riley told Rolling Stone for a 1992 Jackson profile.