“Ms. OJ, So You Know Michael Jackson?”

Halloween 2024.

I had played Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” for my students during our ten-minute break and passed around some candies. In our 75-minute class, the ten-minute break is a routine part of our session, and that day I had planned to make it special. It was light, festive, and nostalgic, a small break from routine. Then came the question from a student that caught me off guard:

“Ms. OJ, so you know Michael Jackson?”

For a moment, I thought I’d misheard. Then it clicked. Hardly a day goes by without random encounters where such questions find their way in.

“Yes, why?” I asked

The student didn’t say a word, just smiled — an awkward, embarrassed smile that slipped out because of the way I responded, the kind that appears when realization collides with ignorance.

It wasn’t the first of its kind. Beyond the classroom, I’d had similar encounters with older people; some supposedly well-educated and well-traveled, with plenty of access to information and the internet. Their questions, often small and seemingly harmless, sometimes even too absurd to repeat, always revealed something deeper about how Africa is imagined. Questions that leave you torn between irritation, laughter, and disbelief. But to be asked whether I knew one of my favorite humans, Michael Jackson!?!?

To come from Africa, for the average Westerner, is often to be imagined as having emerged from a hut beneath the earth, with animals for neighbors; untouched by even the faintest trace of civilization. It’s a narrative so deeply ingrained that it slips into even the most innocent conversations, wrapped in smiles, curiosity, and the comfort of unexamined and very uncomfortable assumptions.

God have mercy…for the blindness is deep.

In this age and time, with unlimited access to information, there is no excuse for ignorance. Such questions are the equivalent of asking if Europe is one big castle, or if Americans all live in Hollywood, or if a Richard in Hawaii knows a Tom in Florida simply because you think both places are just a few kilometers apart.

As an educator, this event is a reminder that classrooms are not just spaces for learning facts but for unlearning myths — those quiet, cultural stories that shape how we see others and ourselves. Every question, even the ridiculous ones, becomes a mirror. And sometimes, all it takes is “Thriller” playing in the background to expose how unevenly the world imagines its others.