Brittany Luce

So when Jackson found himself at the NAACP awards again in 1994, this time in the midst of the child abuse allegations, it made sense he'd use the moment to reassert that support from the Black community.

Black folks are like every other kind of Americans, right?

Which means that we are just as susceptible to sort of conspiratorial thinking as any other group of people.

It's just part of the human condition.

Soraya Nadia McDonald is a writer and culture critic.

She's written several pieces on Michael Jackson over the years, including for The Washington Post.

and certainly because of our specific history and experiences as Americans.

And having part of the experience of being Black and growing up in America being that you are gaslighted about the experiences of Black people in America and their history.

I think it makes it very understandable to have a reaction that when a high-profile Black celebrity, like someone that just holds

There's a long, painful history of Black men being falsely accused of sex crimes.

And as Soraya points out, that history has acted as a very powerful shield against holding high-profile Black men accountable when they're accused of similar things today.

There's another shield Jackson was able to wield that proved to be equally powerful for some time, his childlike wonder.

The narrative around his father Joe's physical and mental abuse and Michael's quote-unquote stolen childhood was something he spoke of often.

And it functioned as this explanation for why he seemed to prefer the company of children over adults his own age.

After the 1993 lawsuit, he channeled that defense into his art to a sometimes strange effect.

There was the saccharine, creepy, have you seen my childhood?

And then there's the 40-ish minute long short film for the single Ghosts.

It uses this age-old horror trope to directly address the allegations.

And Stephen King wrote the screenplay.

Stan Winston directed.