Who Cares What John Mayer Thinks?

I have no idea who is on the cover of People or what celebrity is doing what at any given time. I do enjoy movies, music and sports but I leave it at that. I enjoy these endeavors and don’t seek moral guidance from the athletes, actors or musicians that I admire. Their job is to entertain and in my book, if they are doing that, we are okay. If they say or do something that is not terribly intelligent, I give them a pass just as I would myself, you or anybody else.

I kept on seeing headlines about John Mayer being a racist in my Internet travels so after a couple of Facebook postings, Yahoo and even CNN headlines, I decided to check the story out. First of all, I really don’t believe that comments determine whether or not someone is a racist. We all have our prejudices and to say that we have none is on the verge of impossible. Should we hold that against people? I don’t think so. The only time being prejudice is a problem is when you:

A. Cause harm to someone or their property in the name of hatred of what or who they are.

B. Don’t change your thinking once there are exceptions to whatever prejudice notion you have in your mind.

Being prejudice is to be human. It is not always about race or religion or gender. You could be prejudice about weight, politics, etc. At the end of the day, as long as you are not hurting anyone, I believe it is your choice to be prejudice. I personally don’t recommend it but you don’t have to listen to me. That is the beautiful of being an individual.

Now, as far as John Mayer goes, he is a guy with a guitar who writes songs and sings for a living. He gave an interview where he said some things that may have come out the wrong way and some people may have been offended. While that is unfortunate, I don’t think that he should be crucified and have to offer up tearful apologies.

Here is what I don’t get. People who are in the limelight are people with fame and money but they are still people. They make mistakes, say things that might be offensive and do things we might not agree with. My closest friends and family do those things all the time and I at time, I get very angry with them. However, when John Mayer says something, it causes me no anger. I like some of his music and will continue to listen to it without thinking that I’ve betrayed my race or anything like that.

Race is an ugly, hot button topic. It need not be because as more and more research is done it is clear that we are more alike than different. There are some differences between races genetically but even those differences become skewed if we dig enough. For example, during an insomnia riddled evening I took time to learn about the Sentinelese people who live on an island off the coast of India. The pictures of the people I saw looked like African and immediately my mind classified them as such. However, their DNA says that they are definitely Asian. This is a very simplified example of why race is such a sham. The differences in race continue to fold back into one another and become very similar. If we dig deep enough, those little slight difference seem to become less and less. In my mind, that says that if you go far enough back in time, the first person may have features from all of us. Drawing me to believe that there is a human race with many colors and shapes and well now, aren’t we lucky to have that? Okay, off the soapbox…

So, my conclusion is, let John Mayer say what he wants and stop being so sensitive. Words spoken by some guy you never met really shouldn’t cause outrage in your heart. The guy sings and plays a guitar. He is not making comments and shoving his doctorate degree in your face. He is doing an interview for Playboy, a magazine built on boobs.

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding about ourselves."