Parallels: The King of Pop & Black Gay Pride

Michael Jackson and I were born a month apart. We were both born at a time when being a minority was less than desirable – he, African-American, I, Latino. We are artists and we both shared a passion for children, but took different paths. He was seen as a role model in certain communities. However, due to his limitations and lack of evolution, he failed to live up to an image that would have made him a truly worthy role model. Everyone’s a saint the day after they die, but I’ll never forgive him for the manner in which he approached both his sexual and racial identity.

He was a phenomenal singer and interpreter of human emotion. I first remember bopping to him in sixth grade at my desk in Catholic school as the music drifted in from the streets of the South Bronx. For what seems like generations, we danced, made love and moon-walked to his music. Undoubtedly he was a pioneer in so many ways. In the early ‘80’s when MTV was initially playing only “white rock” and holding onto the platform of “genre” in order to refrain from injecting Black artists in their playlist, it was he who first broke down the gates with videos from his Thriller album and the rest is music video history with “Thriller,” “Beat It” and “Billie Jean.”

As Latino and gay, my life took a different path. I was a filmmaker and TV producer who decided to make a difference because of the South Bronx community that shaped me and I opened a non-profit organization in the early 90’s devoted to training Black and Latino youth to counter negative stereotypes by producing 70 documentary shorts over nearly ten years.
Yet, I was always frustrated that this multi-talented man with adoring fans, celebrity friends, platinum records, hit movies and such, couldn’t convert this power and millions to advocating by example for gay men and women by unleashing his inner being to the world fully. Was it the abuse suffered as a child star, religion or was it the marketing machine run by self-serving adults who counseled otherwise?

When I am taking children who have been marginalized in society because of race and ethnicity and encourage them to love themselves and showcase the best of their culture in media, what can I say when one of their own is incessantly changing his physical features, color and procreating with surrogate moms purposely to produce Caucasian offspring? But they and many others still loved him and like me, bopped to his music.

I live in the West Village often cited as the most expensive neighborhood in Manhattan and clearly defined by class, which is inextricably linked to race. Prior to living here, I always hung out in this neighborhood fleeing my own Bronx in the mid to late ‘70’s to experience the utopia that seemingly could not be found in my own borough. In the last few years, I have also seen Christopher Street change from a predominantly white, gay male population – many who died during the AIDS crisis of the 80’s and 90’s – to a more ethnically colorful community. In the last few years, to the great chagrin of my neighbors, we’re experiencing a new phenomenon. Throughout the year, but especially at the end of the Gay Pride parade there are, what appear to be hundreds of thousands of Black and Latino lesbian, gay and transgender youth who like I did, flee their local communities in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island to be themselves. Many of them could never dress the same way or openly display their affection to the same sex in their home turf.

Undoubtedly, Michael Jackson confronted many challenges and broke down barriers in his own subtle and inimitable manner. Hence, I’m left with gnawing questions: What if in regard to sexual orientation and race, he had made it unequivocally clear who he was? What if, in regard to his identity, he had expressed pride? What a difference this would have made to several generations of young people and those that marched and bopped on Sunday in the West Village – and throughout the rest of the country for the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

To that end, I light candles to Michael Jackson and say, “May you now rest in peace.”



Louis E. Perego Moreno is a Producer and Educator who for the past 27 years has had a bilingual, English and Spanish-language multimedia production company targeting Latinos, Blacks, Urban Youth, Women, LGBTQ Youth and Children with Disabilities.