Can race be changed?

In the midst of entirely too much media coverage of Michael Jackson and his death, one of the few articles which I did read actually made me think of an interesting question.

Anderson Cooper 360 features a blog post by Carmen Vankerckhove, a race and diversity consultant.  The post is headlined “Michael Jackson On Race — His Race.”  She writes about whether it’s hypocritical for Michael Jackson to be celebrated by the black community as a black man since, by appearances at least, he was trying to become “white” — lighter skin, narrower nose, thinner lips.

But what about the plastic surgery, the nose, the hair, and other obviously altered aspects of his appearance? On our blog Racialicious, Readers have been speculating about whether he was driven by internalized racism or something else: an extreme form of artistic expression, an obsessive desire to fix one’s appearance called “body dysmorphic disorder,” or a desire to erase any resemblance to Joe Jackson, his abusive father.

One of the best insights we have into Jackson’s emotional life is a television interview he did with Oprah Winfrey in 1993. He admitted then to being a perfectionist and added, “I’m never pleased with myself. No, I try not to look in the mirror.”

Whatever drove this apparent self-loathing, I don’t believe we can separate race from the equation. Race cannot be separated with precision from body dysmorphic disorder, hatred of his tyrannical father, or any potentially relevant theory being discussed right now.

I agree with the author that Michael Jackson didn’t hate being a black man and he didn’t hate the black community.  However, he certainly seemed to hate looking “black” or maybe he just didn’t want to look like his father.  We’ll never know unless he left personal journals.

Here’s what I was wondering: if he did feel that he should look “white”, is this similar to people who believe that they are the wrong gender and are willing to have their bodies mutilated to make the change?

Can you change your race or your gender?  I don’t believe that you can.  Even if you surgically and hormonally change your body to appear to be the other gender, you will still have the same chromosomes.  Likewise, if you change the appearance of your skin and your features, you still have the same genetic background.  The change is superficial.

The question is probably “does it even matter?”  I don’t know.  Yet another philosophical question to ponder while folding laundry.