John Mayer, the Biggest Loser

It’s not that John Mayer has a preference for white girls.

Or even that the guitarist/singer said it out loud in a Playboy interview, no less, after a journalist asked him if his “hood pass” entices black women to toss the panties his way.

It’s HOW he said it that has me deleting all of his music off my iTunes playlist and tossing his CDs in the trash. Witness:

PLAYBOY: Do black women throw themselves at you?

MAYER: I don’t think I open myself to it. My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock. I’m going to start dating separately from my dick.

Yeah.

Mind you, this pearl came just after he’d finished pontificating on how much black people love him and what it means to be African American. For good measure, he tossed in the “N” word you know, so the ignant mofos could hear him.

I’m guessing he thought a couple of collabos with Common and Kanye, or playing guitar in a couple of gigs with Jay-Z, The Roots, and Dave Chappelle like, gave him the right. Clearly, the brothers never explained to Johnny that it’s just never, ever a good idea for white folk, no matter how cool you think you are with black folk, to go there. Ever.

Of course, the Twitterverse lit his butt up over the outrageous statements enough to coax a self-loathing, kinda-sorta tweet apology from his dumb ass:

“Re: Using the ‘N word’ in an interview: I am sorry that I used the word. And it’s a shame that I did because the point I was trying to make was the exact opposite spirit of the word itself. It was arrogant of me to think I could intellectualize using it, because I realize there’s no intellectualizing a word that is so emotionally charged.”

Later, he tweeted:

“And while I’m using today for looking at myself under harsh light, I think it’s time to stop trying to be so raw in interviews.”

“I just wanted to play the guitar for people. Everything else just sort of popped up and I improvised, and kept doubling down on it…”

Cry me a river, boo.

I think it should be noted that he’s yet to address the “My peen is a racist” comment, and even worse, people—seemingly of all colors, all sexes, all backgrounds—are damn near flipping over backward to defend his right to express his preference for white women.

Here’s the thing, John (and the Mayerites who don’t understand the outrage): If your tool only works with women whose skin matches yours, no problem with me, my dude. Do you. My vagina happens to be highly selective, too. *Kanye shrug* But you do not EVER tell anyone with a microphone in your face that your male member is as racist as a member of a terrorist organization that routinely LYNCHED, BRUTALLY MURDERED, AND SYSTEMATICALLY DESTROYED American citizens and their homes and their families simply because they were black. No matter how sarcastic or funny you thought you were being, that single quote made many of us feel like you absolutely HATE, with an unyielding passion, black girls. It was insulting to black women—all women, really—and reinforces the stereotype that African American women are unattractive and sexually undesirable (unless you’re Kerry Washington, who, according to your Playboy quote, is “white girl crazy” enough to be an acceptable lay because she’ll “suck a dick” and “be like, whatever”). These stereotypes—the ugly, undesirable, the hypersexualized freak—we black women battle day in and day out, around every corner, at every turn. We really didn’t need you to pile on. Surely there had to be a better way for you to shout out your love of white girls without tearing down an entire race of black women for something they can not change.

But I guess no one has ever accused you of being an intellectual.

And nobody ever really gives a rat’s ass about a black woman’s feelings or our right to be offended.

Now, don’t get it twisted: I don’t feel bad about myself because you don’t want to sleep with women who look like me. Neither you nor your music has that kind of power over me. But maybe while you’re examining your “Benetton heart” under all the harsh light, you can marinate on how hurtful your words were. And maybe consider, too, the way you talk about and treat ALL women (your kiss-and-tell quotes about former flames Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Aniston and women in general were no less than bovine). Maybe you could consider, too, just how disturbing it is to your fans—WOMEN, black, white, and everything in between—that a man who would write such a stunningly poignant song like “Daughters,” a song reminding fathers to truly love their baby girls so that they can grow up to be women who can truly open themselves up to love, could be such a jackass to a bunch of mens’ daughters.

Or maybe you can just shut the hell up and play your damn guitar.