Don't be low Self-esteem.

Michael Jackson struck me early on as the vocal star I wanted to be.

His dance moves were too complex for my naturally clumsy kinetics. But it didn't stop me from trying.

"Break dance" was something many young boys did in empty classrooms for practice and out in front of an audience of fair complexioned girls screaming "wow, he can really dance like M.J" atop the heavy metal and bass music.

Every thing about M.J was perfect for his persona...his fashion proclivities, his flair, his finesse...and to many others...his face too!

I never came to terms with why a handsome black man would mesmerizingly love being white and go through plastic surgeries to cement his disgust for how he naturally looked.

What's wrong with the black skin? What's fatal about having African roots?

Had he not been blessed with talent and trophies that he could be treated as a racial equal?

These questions agitated me each time MJ's high falsetto blared from a radio. I must admit, those puzzles didn't allow me respect his iconoclasm so freely or so fully since I felt he too, was bound by self loathing chains unjustifiably.

It was until I completed my dermatology class, heard of the Vitiligo condition and why Michael Jackson had gone through surgeries that I began to understand I needed to be free of my opinion of him.

Having had chicken-pox and wrestled with the many things I almost wished to do to make my face as smooth as it once was, I have come to appreciate that the odds of compromise are harder for those in the show-biz industry where looks are everything.

For M.J, it was an irreversible medical skin whitening condition, advancing lethally on his melanin deposits until he had to do things to look less embarrassing.

And here was I, in far away Nigeria, judging him for a situation I knew nothing of and it corrupted my ability to love, not only his genius behind a microphone but his grit before an unforgiving population of quizzing critics!

He continued to live his life in spite of those like me who couldn't rationalize his actions because we couldn't wear the shoes he wore. So should we.

We mustn't spend our energies trying to make folks like us, validate us, or accept us. Sometimes they would later do that after they've been through a metaphorical dermatology class. Sometimes they will after a "chicken pox" experience. Sometimes they never will. But it's okay.

While others are wound up in disgust, mellow in delight. They will be alright, now or later.