John Mayer Slammed for "Racist" Remarks in Playboy
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Nevermind his crass remarks on Jessica Simpson.
John Mayer is coming under fire for comments he makes about African American women in his controversial March Playboy interview.
Asked "Do black women throw themselves at you?" Mayer, 32, replies:
"I don't think I open myself to it. My d*ck is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fu*kin’ David Duke c*ck. I'm going to start dating separately from my d*ck. …I always thought Holly Robinson Peete was gorgeous. Every white dude loved Hilary from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And Kerry Washington. She’s super hot and she’s also white-girl crazy. Kerry Washington would break your heart like a white girl. Just all of a sudden she’d be like, ‘Yeah, I sucked his d*ck. Whatever.'"
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A rep for Washington, 33, had no comment.
Katheryn Russell-Brown, director of the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations at the University of Florida and author of The Color of Crime, tells UsMagazine.com that Mayer seems to be saying "black women are not just not his type, they're not in his class. They're beneath him."
Adds Laurie L. Mulvey, co-director of the Race Relations Project at Penn State University: "Both white people and people of color will be offended by Mayer commenting so flippantly about an issue that has caused so much pain in this culture, especially to black women."
Mulvey tells Us that Mayer's comments "create an atmosphere that is unfriendly to building trust and his words once again reinforce the idea that people of color are objects and white people are racist. This has particular impact when such words come from a celebrity who is admired by people of so many different backgrounds."
Mulvey also says "choosing to invoke David Duke to explain these ethnocentric escapades flies in the face of Mayer's self-congratulatory claim that he has a 'Benetton heart.'"
Richard T. Ford, author of The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse, tells Us that Mayer is "being deliberately provocative and since he assures us that black people love him -- thanks for letting us know -- it's supposed to be okay."
The problem: Mayer's "tongue-in-cheek racism satirizes racial stereotypes and but also sort of traffics in them," Ford tells Us. "Sarah Silverman does post racist very adroitly -- she's both hilarious and thought provoking. Mayer does it badly -- he's offensive and tiresome."
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Adds Ford, "Tragically, this is what passes for edginess for many celebrities today -- someone blurting out the most crude and insulting thing that comes to what we might charitably call his 'mind.' Mayer did say one smart in the interview: 'I think the world would be better off if I stopped doing interviews.' Amen."
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Oh, blah, blah, blah, everyone wants to call everything racist these days. So he isn't attracted to black women. Neither am I, and I'm black myself. Big deal.
leave John Mayer alone. Honestly, at worse he could be criticized for poor phrasing, maybe a lil insensitivity. However, he was being honest and was just trying to throw a bit of humor into his answer. It failed, but I think he can hardly be called a racist for not being attracted to black women.
i am a fan of john and i agree with the fact that you cant control who your attracted to but the whole white supremicist thing was over the top i mean im mostley attracted to white guys but that dosnt make it right to be little another race
u
something out of nothing..get a life people!!
He's ugly and probably has a tiny dick anyway! hahaha!
so what
Haha he's pretty ugly anyways so no decent looking woman, black or white, would want him.
lets agree to disagree.
well i to the truth i probably prefer these races because their darker *gasp am a racist* woops!!
I don't know if he is a racist our ignorant sh*t head who sings of grace and beauty and peace an knows nothing about it, but to tell tha truth as ablack woman am not a offended by the jist of wat he's trying to say- he's not attracted to us okay i get it! but the white supremacist thing is way over the hedge. truthfully there are very few white male celebs i find attractive- the rest are just plain UGLY like my pal john here. I prefer hot sexy big black men like lance gross for example- in second place:latinos, then indians(the tall ones any way) then everyone else is tied in a bundle!
As a black woman who dates all races and a former lover of John Mayer's music, I have an thought. I feel like his slip of the tongue showed two things. 1.His nonexistent attraction to black women. Not being attracted to every single person is realistic, but blurting out offensive remarks about and entire group of people in the public eye, as a celebrity, is just stupid. 2ndly he has shown his lack of love for his fans. Next time John should just flip his fans the bird because that seems like a fair respresentation of his thoughts. Respecting your fans enough to keep your potentially offensive opinions to yourself shows true humility. The sad thing is that I wont be purchasing or supporting ignorance anytime soon.
Leave the guy alone. I'm sure he didn't mean to seem racist
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@Jeff - he probably knows about David Duke b/c of Howard Stern and, perhaps, reading. GASP!! Oh my. The concept of a young person reading about history! It CAN'T be true! I mean, I'm younger than John Mayer and I know who David Duke is, and I'm no racist.
His comment wasn't racist at all. The question asked of him was more racist than his response. The interviewer brought up the subject of race and he gave a response that isn't saying anything racist. Anyone that finds it racist is racist themselves. I'm more offended by the comment made by the co-director of the Race Relations Project at Penn State saying "white people and people of color" as if those of us with white skin can't possibly be "of color". We're just "the other guys". Nice.
This isn't just a matter of not being attracted to one color or the other. That's normal. There's more to it than that in this case. He gave a lot a strange, deep-rooted responses to a simple question, almost to the point of rambling. The question itself seems a bit odd too though but it's a Playboy interview, not NBC News. How does he even know about racist David Duke as young as he is? Probably been doing research on his computer on famous racists. He probably knows about Stom Thurmond too. I wouldn't have known the disturbed thought in John Mayer's little mind if not for that question. It's very odd based on how "innocent" or "nice" his music sounds. Into the landfill his music goes!
well maybe he just isnt sexually attracted to black girls... nothnig really wrong with that