General Dermatology

Jackson Whites is a pejorative term for a group of people who have been living for centuries in the beautiful and remote Ramapo Valley, a breathtaking section of the Ramapo Mountains that crosses the New York/New Jersey border at Suffern, NY. Many believe this name is short for Jacks and whites, with Jacks purportedly having been slang for runaway slaves; however, this is just one of many currently unprovable myths regarding this population. The group has mainly a Native American, African American, and Caucasian heritage. They prefer to use the Dutch spelling to describe themselves as the Ramapough Mountain Indians; they also go by the name of Lenape Nation. There is little documentation of their over 300-year history in the area, largely because the Lenape people had no written language.

Until his death in 2013,  Paul Karason garnered attention from the media as the notorious blue man. However, Karason did not become famous on purpose. His trademark blue skin was the result of an alternative medical treatment he used to reduce the symptoms of dermatitis 15 years before he died. Although this treatment is known to be harmful, it did not cause his death, according to Fox News.

In the years before his death, several theories swirled around Michael Jacksons skin. Jacksons skin had been medium-brown in color since he was a child, but the pop superstars skin became noticeably lighter during the 1980s.

In his 1991 book Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness, biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli accused Jackson of bleaching his skin to appear whiter. Taraborrelli does write that a doctor had diagnosed Jackson with vitiligo in the 1980s, but insists that the condition was the result of skin-bleaching chemicals rather than heredity.