Is race card in Jackson deck?

His black skin has become white and his nose has been thinned to near-disintegration. His male voice is soprano and his hair now cascades like a woman’s over one eye.

Michael Jackson, the black child prodigy whose musical genius made him for decades the world’s biggest pop draw, has spent much of his adult life obliterating, to heartbreaking effect, the identity he was born with. By the time he was arrested late last year on charges of child molestation, he seemed neither male nor female, neither child nor grown-up, neither conventionally nor unconventionally sexual, and most markedly -- to paraphrase his 1991 hit song -- neither black nor white.

But as the case against Jackson has lurched toward Friday’s arraignment, one of its most fevered sideshows has revolved around how “black” a defendant he will be.

“Is Michael Jackson about to pull the race card?” That was MSNBC’s Chris Matthews last month on “Hardball.”

“Will the [Nation of Islam] remain low or have a big security presence?” That was online columnist Roger Friedman, Fox News’ go-to guy on all things Jacko.

“Is Michael Jackson Turning Black Again?” the South African Mail & Guardian asked in an online commentary that ricocheted around the world via e-mail.

On Monday, a group of his advisors briefly allowed reporters into a business meeting at the Beverly Hills Hotel, in part to quell the latest twist on the debate -- reports that members of the historically separatist black Muslim group the Nation of Islam were not only providing private security for Jackson but also controlling the star’s legal and financial dealings.

Among those present at the gathering was Leonard Muhammad, a high-ranking official of the Nation of Islam and the son-in-law of Louis Farrakhan, the organization’s leader. Muhammad, according to the Associated Press, sat at one head of the conference table.

Asked whether Muhammad’s role extended to Jackson’s finances, Charles Koppelman, Jackson’s financial advisor, told reporters, “No, sir.” Asked what role the Nation of Islam was playing, Jackson’s criminal lawyer, Mark Geragos, replied, “No role.” Asked why Muhammad was present, Geragos expressed exasperation.

“People have talked about how [Jackson’s other] advisors have no access and aren’t talking to him, and it’s just not true,” said Geragos. Muhammad, he said, “is an advisor, period,” and the Nation of Islam’s security detail is one of three protecting his client.

“I think it’s an outrage for reporters to make a story out of it just because of [Muhammad’s] religious or political affiliation. Are you afraid I’m a member of an Armenian terrorist organization?” asked the Armenian American Geragos. “It’s almost racist just to bring it up.”

The fact that such questions have come up, though, underscores one of the ways in which celebrity justice has become its own cultural genre, with its own formulaic choreography.

From the perp walks on CNN to the online blogs to the Court TV commentary and inevitable “rise-and-fall” retrospectives on VH1 and E! Entertainment, the trials of the rich and famous have created an international audience of court watchers, who in turn have become conditioned to look for an increasingly fixed set of dramatic conventions.

And post-O.J., legal experts say, one of those conventions is: If the celebrity defendant is African American, the audience should expect a subplot about race.

“It’s the race card. We’re so used to having it played that we just automatically look for it,” said Loyola University law professor Laurie Levenson, noting the extent to which race has coursed through the public discussion of high-profile criminal defendants from boxer Mike Tyson to record producer Suge Knight to basketball star Kobe Bryant.

“It even has its own phrases and buzzwords that we hear now -- ‘rush to judgment’, ‘modern-day lynching.’ Right after Michael Jackson was arrested, I got a call from the Larry Elder [talk radio] show and all of a sudden, Elder said something to the effect of, ‘Do you think he’s being prosecuted because he’s black?’ And my first reaction was, ‘Black? He is?’ ”

But from the time of Jackson’s Nov. 20 arrest in Santa Barbara County, race, however tangential, was part of the cross talk. It was a significant departure from 1993, the first time the 45-year-old recording artist faced molestation accusations.

Back then -- a year before the arrest of O.J. Simpson -- race was mentioned only fleetingly as Jackson’s publicists and lawyers (one of whom was Johnnie Cochran, who eventually would represent Simpson) rallied black entertainers and community leaders, apparently to avoid the perception that African Americans were less enthusiastic than other members of the public about Jackson.

The criminal case was dropped after the alleged victim accepted a reported $15 million to $24 million settlement from Jackson and decided not to testify against him.

Throughout, however, public comment was focused almost solely on the question of Jackson’s guilt and the power of his celebrity.

This time, however, the charges have landed in a more chaotic context, and one in which racism has come be viewed both as a pernicious social problem and a public relations tool that is now so ubiquitous as to be a cliche.

In fact, Jackson himself unexpectedly invoked race last year during a fight with his record company over the lackluster sales of his “Invincible” album, taking the stage with the Rev. Al Sharpton and calling Tommy Mottola, then music chairman of Sony, “mean, racist and very, very devilish” for pressuring him financially.

The stance -- taken amid reports that Jackson had become deeply indebted -- sparked widespread amusement, particularly among African Americans. “It’s ... sad that Jackson had to get himself into such a fix in order to come home,” the Nation of Islam’s newspaper said in an editorial at the time.

Thus, the stage was set when, the day after Jackson’s arrest, his brother Jermaine referred to the spectacle as a “lynching,” and the Rev. Jesse Jackson weighed in with questions about why Jackson’s $3 million bail was triple the bail amount set in the murder case against the famous music producer Phil Spector, who is white.

Meanwhile, soul singer Rick James, who himself spent two years behind bars on an assault conviction, wondered on CNN why Jackson was dogged with pedophilia accusations when Elvis Presley “had Priscilla [Presley] when she was 14, 15 years old” and wasn’t prosecuted. “As soon as you get famous and black, they go after you,” James said.

But the race talk gathered the most momentum last month, when the Fox News website and the New York Post gossip columns published rumors first that Jermaine Jackson, a convert to Islam, had brought Muhammad in as his brother’s security advisor, then that Michael Jackson had joined the Nation of Islam, then that Muhammad had asserted control of the entertainer’s business affairs.

By the time the Nation of Islam and Michael Jackson’s lawyers denied the rumors, the story had been picked up by the rest of the media, fueled by leaks from competing factions within the entertainer’s large circle of hangers-on and assorted associates. “The Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan’s son-in-law have taken over completely and are in full and total charge,” an anonymous “senior Jackson employee” worried aloud to the New York Times.

The reports, which reached critical mass over the holidays in December, set off a gale of speculation. Were they true? Was Jackson, who had built a career blurring racial differences -- and who had married and divorced two white women -- now suddenly a black separatist? Or was he just retreating in a time of crisis to the arms of his family and, by extension, the people who came with them? Had Jackson merely hired the Nation of Islam to do his security, like any number of high-profile people, or was he being “brainwashed”? Or were the tales a ploy to make Jackson more sympathetic to potential black jurors, in the event his trial was moved to an urban courtroom from Santa Maria, where juries tend to be mostly white?

Any of it seemed possible in the new world of celebrity justice, and all theories were grist for the 24-hour sideshow, despite the Jackson camp’s increasingly vehement insistence that the Nation of Islam’s involvement had been overblown. And despite the lack of any sign that race would be part of Jackson’s defense. (His lawyers have steadfastly asserted that the accuser’s family was out to extort him.)

“The Michael Jackson case is a case of an eccentric person accused of pedophilia,” said Stanley Crouch, a syndicated columnist and author who has written extensively on race in America and, from time to time, on Jackson. “That’s the start of it and that’s the end of it. Nobody, black or white, looks at Michael Jackson in terms of an ethnic group. He’s not looked at as white or black -- in fact, he’s damn near created his own ethnic category, which is no category at all.”

Los Angeles civil rights lawyer Connie Rice thinks it’s slightly more complicated. “The American deck of cards has race cards all through it. The question is, are they at the top of the deck or the bottom of the deck?” she observed.

“If you left this case to its facts, race would not be a factor. For race to really come into play, the case has to involve society’s powerful taboos, and that essentially means it has to involve a virile black male.

“Well,” Rice said, laughing, “Michael Jackson may be virile to a 12-year-old girl, but he isn’t to most people. He hasn’t looked black in years, and his image is androgynous. This isn’t a case like Kobe Bryant, which triggers all those racial dynamics.”

But, she added, “anybody can always inject race if they want to, and that’s what’s interesting here. I would say that it’s celebrity that’s driving this case, not race, but race can be a way to change the subject, reframe the debate, speak to different audiences. So how do you put the race card at the top of the deck if it isn’t there naturally? Well, associating with the Nation of Islam is a quick way to do it, if that’s what you want.”

On Monday, as reporters swarmed locust-like around the Beverly Hills Hotel suite where Jackson’s associates were meeting, it remained unclear whether Jackson intentionally sought to raise the race issue by bringing Muhammad -- and by extension, his sect -- into his inner circle. It did, however, appear that his other advisors were hoping the questions would go away.

“This is yesterday’s news,” Geragos said, even as fresh gossip about Jackson’s finances was surfacing from the meeting that had been publicized to help quiet the Nation of Islam rumors. “There is no trouble in paradise.”