The 8 Most Unintentionally Racist Things White Celebrities (Not Named John Mayer) Have Ever Done

Eff what ya heard: Some people actually do read Playboy for the articles! No one knows that better right now than John Mayer. By now, you know the story: Mayer’s recent interview with Playboy was published online on Wednesday. In it, he made a bunch of kinda, sorta, are they?/aren’t they?, semi-racist remarks including, “My dick is a white supremacist” and “If you really had a hood pass, you could call it a nigger pass” before using his Twitter page to issue an apology that night. And the innanets went crazy over it! Still are, actually.

 But hold up for just a second. Now, we’re certainly not condoning what Mayer said. But if you take the time to, you know, read the article, as Playboy writer Rob Tannenbaum suggested on his own Twitter page shortly after the interview hit the Web, you’ll notice that John Mayer is not actually a racist. Poor choice of words? Um, yes! But Mayer is not exactly the next John Rocker, K-K-Kramer or Dog the Bounty Hunter. That said, he’s also not the first white celebrity to catch hell for stepping a little too far over the line when it comes to race. And to prove that point, we tracked down eight other examples of white celebrities saying or doing something that made us step back and say: “Um, did that really just happen?” Get ready to go dumb. —Chris Yuscavage