Video: 'Michael Jackson - They Don't Care About Us'

(Thursday, June 15, 1995) — Leaders from two prominent Jewish organizations today condemned lyrics from an upcoming Michael Jackson song, calling them anti-Semitic and inappropriate for his global teen audience.

The controversy centers on Jackson’s track “They Don’t Care About Us,” set to be released June 20, 1995, on his new album HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I. The song includes the lines: “Jew me, sue me, everybody do me / Kick me, kike me, don’t you black or white me.”

“How could Mr. Jackson have used the expressions ‘Jew me’ and ‘kike me’ in a pop album aimed at a teen-age audience?” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies. “It’s the ambiguity that I’m afraid of when it reaches his 20 million buyers around the world.”

Hier said he accepted Jackson’s explanation that the song was intended to denounce prejudice, but warned that the lyrics could be misunderstood without further context.

David A. Lehrer, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, also criticized the song. “The words are hateful and hurtful, and hate is too serious a subject for subtleties,” Lehrer said. “Why single out Jews?”

In an interview aired last night on ABC’s Prime Time Live, Jackson defended the lyrics, calling the song a symbolic statement about the pain of discrimination. “It’s not anti-Semitic because I’m not a racist,” Jackson said. “I could never be a racist. I love all races.”

Neither Hier nor Lehrer called for the song’s removal but suggested Jackson clarify his intent with a statement in the album’s packaging.

“They Don’t Care About Us” opens with a chorus singing, “All I wanna say is that they don’t really care about us.” The album is Jackson’s first since allegations of child molestation in 1993 led to a civil lawsuit and criminal investigations, which ultimately ended without charges.