Mega-producer Pharrell Williams is feeling the heat for neglecting to feature a black woman on the cover of his new album, titled simply “G I R L”.
The cover features Williams, 40. posing with three women — 1 Caucasian, 1 Hispanic and 1 LSLH. All four are clad in bathrobes and dark sunglasses.
Williams, who recently married a mixed race woman, said, “The woman I’m standing closest to, she is black and she’s been a friend of mine for a long time.”
I beg to differ. It is ignorant and racist to assume that people of mixed parentage are black. This is the type of backwards thinking that is reinforced by people who still believe in the archaic one drop rule.
Williams responded to the backlash in an interview with another blog.
“They’re ill informed. The woman I’m standing closest to, she is black and she’s been a friend of mine for a long time. You know, I’m confused by it,” the Oscar-nominee admitted. “Then they’re going to ask me ‘do I not have an Indian woman on there or a Pakistani woman on there?’ But meanwhile, I do. She is African American and I feel sorry for her that people will look her dead in her face like ‘she ain’t black,’ but she is black. It’s a girl I use to date years ago.”
“It’s just unfortunate because it’s 2014 and we have a President [who’s black],” Williams continued to explain to the site. “Is this what it is? Is it because she’s not brown? I don’t feel funny about our President because he is what he is.”
“Meanwhile, has anybody forgotten that I’m black myself? I wake up everyday and I wave the black flag. Everything that I’m doing. You know, this ‘Happy’ song going #1. What is the guy that’s singing the song? What do you mean?”