Wasn't there the poor taste joke about him and Cilla
What's the difference between Cilla Black and Michael Jackson?
Cilla started white, and ended Black, Michael Jackson started black and ended white
Remember, MJ autopsy confirmed he suffered from Vitiligo, which is a skin condition. I've seen someone with it; in this case there was a jagged demarkation line across the face, on one side the skin was white/pink looking like blotchy european skin, the other side of the line, it was afro-carribean black skin. It was very disfiguring, drawing your eye in a public space so strongly that you want to apologise a moment later for the staring you did before you realised. No one in the public eye could leave their skin like this, and bleaching of the darker skin is the only option to even up skin tone - you can insert melanin into the skin.
Of course, there's no denying he changed his classically African nose into something you'd only see in cartoon aryan children, but the skin colour itself was not under his control.