As right-wing reactionary zealots and bigots pathetically denounce President Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize win as ‘Affirmative Action’ — although no such program exists anywhere outside the United States — Obama’s win is nonetheless a confirmation of the world’s response to his commitment for world peace. Interestingly enough, Obama is accomplishing on the world stage what another venerated figure, Michael Jackson, spent his adult career working to eradicate: poverty, peace and injustice.
Often obscured by his brilliant musicianship and news grabbing eccentricities was Jackson’s singular devotion to children and peace on a global scale. Several of Jackson’s greatest hits, including the bestselling single of the time, “We Are the World” spoke to these issues.
We are the world/
We are the children/
We are the ones who make a brighter day/
So let’s start giving/
There’s a choice we’re making/
We’re saving our own lives/
It’s true we’ll make a better day/
Just you and me/ …
*Written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie
While Obama was surprised to become the latest recipient of the Nobel Prize, he quickly deferred to his predecessors whose shoulders he stands on: “This award must be shared with everyone who strives for justice and dignity – for the young woman who marches silently in the streets on behalf of her right to be heard even in the face of beatings and bullets; for the leader imprisoned in her own home because she refuses to abandon her commitment to democracy.”
This is not the only time Jackson and Obama achieved synergy when it came to addressing inequality or pervasive poverty. Both men grew up in deprived communities and became all too familiar with its debilitating affects. At his Inauguration, Obama articulated his vision of transforming health care and education and stimulating the economy as a way to reduce poverty levels. Jackson’s great hit, outside of “Billie Jean,” was arguably a song that spoke to the political/ethnic strife
and the abject poverty that continues to impact so much of the world.
I see
the kids in the street/With not enough to eat/Who am I to be blind/Pretending
not to see their needs/A summer’s disregard/A broken bottle top/And a one man’s
soul/They follow each other/On the Wind ya’ know/Cause they got nowhere to
go/That’s why I want you to know/I’m starting with the man in the mirror/I’m
asking him to change his ways/ …
Another area in which President Obama and the late King of Pop waxed
poetic was the interminable struggle for justice and equality for all human
beings. Obama told Howard University students in 2007:
“The teenagers and college students who left
their homes to march in the streets of Birmingham and Montgomery; the mothers
who walked instead of taking the bus after a long day of doing somebody else’s
laundry and cleaning somebody else’s kitchen — they didn’t brave fire hoses and
Billy clubs so that their grandchildren and great-grandchildren would still
wonder at the beginning of the 21st century whether their vote would
be counted; whether their civil rights would be protected by their government;
whether justice would be equal and opportunity would be theirs …”
You only have to check out what
MJ had to say on the song “They Don’t Really Care about Us,” to see how sensitive Jackson was to injustice and how it fractured lives and retarded social growth:
Tell me
what has become of my rights/
Am I invisible because you ignore me?/
Your proclamation promised me free liberty, now/
I’m tired of bein’ the victim of shame/
They’re throwing me in a class with a bad name/
I can’t believe this is the land from which I came/
You know I do really hate to say it/
The government don’t wanna see/
But if Roosevelt was livin’/
He wouldn’t let this be, no, no/
Though Obama and Jackson receive much more renown for their political
and musical brilliance, respectively, both made equality, world peace and
the eradication of poverty their life’s mission. – terry shropshire
