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I understand the instinct to look at Joe Jackson’s circumstances and say, “He was trying to protect his children.” Gary was not an easy place to raise a family. Poverty, racism, violence, and limited options are real pressures, and I do not think it is fair to talk about any Black parent from that era without acknowledging the danger they were trying to survive.
But I strongly reject the idea that abuse becomes protection because some of the children became successful.
Whipping children, humiliating them, terrorizing them, and making them afraid of you is not the same thing as protecting them. It may produce discipline. It may produce achievement. It may even produce obedience. But it also produces trauma, fear, shame, and lifelong wounds. Those wounds do not disappear because the family became famous or because some of the children avoided jail or addiction.
That is the dangerous part of this argument: it treats success as proof that the harm was justified. By that logic, any abusive parent could point to a child’s accomplishments and say, “See? It worked.” But a person can succeed despite abuse, not because of it. A child can survive a harmful household and still carry the damage for the rest of their life.
Also, “they didn’t go to jail” is an extremely low bar for parenting. Children deserve more than simply being kept out of the streets. They deserve safety inside their own home too. Protection from the outside world should not come at the cost of being harmed by the people responsible for loving them.
I can hold two truths at once: Joe Jackson may have been operating under real fear and pressure, and he may have helped create opportunities for his children. But that does not erase the abuse. It does not make it loving. It does not make it necessary. And it does not make the children ungrateful or dishonest for naming what happened to them.
We have to be very careful not to romanticize harm just because it happened in a family that produced extraordinary talent. Black children have always deserved gentleness, dignity, and protection. Not just results.
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"i do more for both our communities than you'll ever know." - Heinz
"But rest assured, in my luxurious house built on the backs of people darker than me, I am sipping fine scotch and scoffing at how stupid you are." - bshelly
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