True You by Janet Jackson Page A

have been enjoying success. But I wasn’t. In many ways, whether in control or not, I was still preoccupied about body rather than soul. I knew that had to change.
    I have friends who think that I grew up quickly. Others are convinced I grew up slowly. I believe both statements are true.
    As a child, I worked in the world of adults. I had adult concerns and responsibilities. I could act like an adult. I could converse with adults. Indeed, I had an adult salary and certain adultresponsibilities. But that didn’t make me an adult. It wasn’t until the end of the 1980s, when I began working on
Rhythm Nation,
that I began to view myself in completely grown-up terms.
Control
was a necessary first step in moving from childhood to adulthood. But it was with
Rhythm Nation
that I felt mature enough to address urgent social concerns. I also felt strong enough to ignore those business advisers who argued against making a record that dealt with issues like racism.
    Looking back, I see that I made the decision as a confident adult, not a frightened child. I stuck to my beliefs, and not because I was stubborn or felt compelled to prove anything. I stuck to my beliefs because they were important to me. They were born out of my view of the world. I didn’t see myself as an expert on social issues, any more than I see myself as an expert on more personal issues. At the same time, I couldn’t ignore the blatant injustice in a country pledged to equality. I felt obligated to speak about troubling aspects of our society.
    “We are in a race between education and catastrophe,” I sang in “Race.” I believed it then; and twenty-two years later, I still do.
    I was very gratified when I saw my songs reach deep into the hearts of so many young people, living in every condition imaginable. I received a flood of responses to my music, much of it surprisingly personal.
    Twins—a young man and woman—roughly my age told me about growing up in an impoverished neighborhood in one of our biggest cities. Their mom was a dark-skinned black woman and their dad a fair-skinned Dominican. She worked as a domesticand he was a part-time mechanic. The young man—I’ll call him Dexter—had his dad’s light coloring, and the girl—I’ll call her Deidre—resembled her mother. So dramatic was the difference in coloring that not even their teachers believed they were twins. They carried their birth certificates wherever they went, just to prove it.
    In school, Dexter received better treatment than Deidre. He attracted girls as well as the teachers’ favors. Deidre was largely ignored. They both were interested in drama and were equally talented, but it was Dexter, not Deidre, who was accepted into the high school acting society. Deidre was every bit as attractive as Dexter, but her skin tone, even in this so-called enlightened era, held her back.
    When they were teenagers, their parents died in a car accident and they were sent to stay with a relative who lived on food stamps in a tiny tenement apartment. She treated Dexter like a prince and Deidre like dirt. Brokenhearted, Deidre ran away to another city, where she was never able to escape the cycle of poverty. She worked in a factory and tried to complete high school at night. She lived in a boardinghouse run by a church group, but the church fell on hard times, the house closed down, and Deidre was forced to move in with a coworker. The coworker turned out to be a drug addict. Not long afterward, when Deidre’s job was eliminated, she found herself living on the streets.
    For years, Dexter searched for his sister in vain. He won a scholarship to college and it was in his junior year that, in his own words, he decided “to take control.” He found an organization that dealt with missing children, and three months later they locatedDeidre in a psychiatric hospital. Rather than deal with Deidre’s problems, the inadequately funded facility kept her sedated on heavy drugs. Dexter valiantly fought