Black News Anchor is Turning White
Lee Thomas‘ once brown, even complexion is now mottled with pale patches around his eyes and mouth, along his nose and on his ears; his arms, shoulders and chest are speckled and blotched.
“I’m a black man turning white on television and people can see it,” says Thomas, an anchor and entertainment reporter for the local Fox Broadcasting Company affiliate. “If you’ve watched me over the years, you’ve seen my hands completely change from brown to white.”
Thomas has vitiligo, a disorder in which pigment-making cells are destroyed. White patches appear on different parts of the body, tissues in the mouth and nose, and the retina.
“There is no cause. There is no cure, and it’s very random,” Thomas says. “I could turn all the way white or mostly white.”
The Associated Press reports,
Few people, outside medical professionals and those with the disease, had heard the term “vitiligo” until Michael Jackson revealed in the early 1990s that the disorder was behind his skin turning brown to white.
It’s not fatal, but experts say vitiligo robs people of self-confidence, evokes ridicule and unpleasant stares, and pushes some into unforced seclusion.
The 40-year-old Thomas says that’s not where the disorder needs to be. He openly talks about vitiligo and how it has affected his life and career, and has written a book about his journey titled “Turning White: A Memoir of Change.” Along the way, Thomas says he’s met others with the disorder and has become a celebrity spokesman for the Columbus, Ohio-based National Vitiligo Foundation.
Vitiligo attacks the soul and psyche, foundation executive director Robert Haas says.
“When was the last time you saw someone with vitiligo handling your food? It is the public’s image that it is some leprosy-type of disease,” he says. “A lot of folks feel this disease has trapped them and kept them away from their life goals.”
That was Thomas’ fear.
He uses a combination of creams and makeup to cover the growing patches of skin — which he calls devoid of color — on his face, hands and arms. Viewers, co-workers and, for years, his basketball buddies, were none the wiser.
Only family members and those closest to him knew the secret he had kept since age 25.
Thomas first noticed a change after getting a haircut while working in Louisville, Ky. He looked in a mirror and thought the barber had nicked him. A closer look revealed a pale spot, about the size of a quarter.
“I got two more on the other side of my scalp, on my hand and one in the corner of my mouth,” he recalls in an interview from the station’s studio. “That’s when I went to the doctor and got diagnosed.”
Michael Jackson is said to have the same disease.
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My father’s oldest sister had Vitiligo. I was horrified because I looked just like her. She lived to be about 90 and she NEVER became totally White. MJ bleached himself.
I do not have it.