Let’s start on a positive note with this story, because I’m going to be incandescent with rage by the end of it. Pharrell Williams was in Miami a few days ago, and he received the key to the city for all of his contributions to the city and the culture. At the 5th Annual Black Ambition Demo Day in Miami, Pharrell praised and highlighted Black and underrepresented innovators, artists, creators and entrepreneurs. He also showcased his work with his own nonprofit, Black Ambition, which gives away more than $1 million in award money for the Black Ambition Prize. All of this is great.
Unfortunately, at this Miami event, Pharrell spouted off about politics again. Or rather, how much he hates all politics and he hates when celebrities get involved with campaigns or political endorsements. He spoke about this last year, in the heat of the presidential election, when he proudly proclaimed: “I don’t do politics. In fact, I get annoyed sometimes when I see celebrities trying to tell you [who to vote for]. There are celebrities that I respect that have an opinion, but not all of them.” As I said at the time, he can say he doesn’t “do politics,” but politics has a say in everything Pharrell does, everything he touches, every part of his career and his life as a Black American man. It’s absolutely pathetic that he doesn’t acknowledge that or understand that. Well, Pharrell was back on his bullsh-t:
Pharrell Williams isn’t a big fan of politics. Skateboard P revealed his current stance on the political landscape at the 5th annual Black Ambition Demo Day. “I hate politics,” he said. “Like, despise them. It’s a magic trick. It’s not real. I don’t believe in either side. Because I think when you pick a side, you are inadvertently supporting division.”
“Yes, it’s not a popular point of view, but I just gotta say, when I think about it, the wells are drying up,” he added.
Williams also gave his thoughts on supporting businesses based on skin color. Addressing Black people in the audience, he asked, “Do you think for what it is that you do, do you think you’re the best? Do you want the job because you’re black or because you’re the best?”
“Do you want someone to support your startup because you’re black or because you’re the best?” Williams continued. “I think now for me, it’s about us having the best ambition, and that’s the reason why you should support these businesses,” continued Williams. “Yes, they happen to be black and brown, but it should be based on the fact that they’re the best, not because of a shade of skin color.”
Just so we’re clear, he’s created this Black Ambition nonprofit to fund and promote Black innovators and entrepreneurship, but then at the event for his nonprofit, he criticizes the idea that Black and marginalized entrepreneurs might need a helping hand simply because of their race or ethnicity. Weird how the conversation around Black entrepreneurs and Black creators is so… what’s the word? Politicized. Almost as if the politics of race touches everything – from business to beauty to art to money. “I think when you pick a side, you are inadvertently supporting division.” Will you shut the f–k up? The worst part is that he thinks he sounds so f–king deep.
"Do you want the job because you're Black or because you're the best?"
Pharrell explains why he hates politics and says supporting a business shouldn’t be based on someone’s skin color, but because it’s the best.
(🎥 there nicky goes/TikTok)
pic.twitter.com/VVCC57eg6S— The Art Of Dialogue (@ArtOfDialogue_) November 16, 2025
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
-
- Pharrell Williams attends ‘ Piece by Piece ’ – Closing Night Headline Gala during the BFI London Film Festival, at the Southbank Centre, Royal Festival Hall in London, England. UK. Sunday 20th October 2024 -,Image: 924239842, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: NORESTRICTIONS, Model Release: no, Pictured: LFF – Piece by Piece – Headline Gala, Credit line: James Warren/Bang Showbiz/Avalon
-
- Pharrell Williams performs on the stage during the “Grace For The World” event at St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, Vatican, on 13 September 2025.,Image: 1037129308, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Stefano Costantino TTL/Avalon
-
- Craig Robins Private Dinner Celebrating Two Of The Same Kind Featuring: Pharrell Williams Where: Miami, Florida, United States When: 28 Nov 2022 Credit: Seth Browarnik/startraksphoto.co/Cover Images
-
- 65th Annual Grammy Awards held at Crypto Arena – Arrivals Featuring: Pharrell Williams Where: Los Angeles, California, United States When: 05 Feb 2023 Credit: BauerGriffin/INSTARimages
-
- Arrivlas at the Trocadero ahead of the opening ceremony for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Featuring: Pharrell Williams Where: Paris, France When: 26 Jul 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
Someone should show him that old video where they line up 100 people then say thing like take a step back if you come from a single parent family, take a step back if you qualified for free meals at school, etc. The race we’re in is completely unfair for a lot of reasons totally out of peoples personal control.
Nice that a rich guy gets to ignore that reality for everyone else.
Yes. The Horatio Alger experience really clarifies some things about equity and politics and economics and people’s lived experiences. I participated in one (at a beautiful property with a gorgeous pagoda at one end of the space and a fence at the other). By the end, the white folks were at the front with one white woman all the way in the pagoda, several of the Black and Brown participants (even those with financial advantages) were somewhere middle to back and the Native participants (who had joined from a reservation) were at the very back of the property, against the fence. They didn’t even have space to continue moving backwards so they started kicking the fence to represent the steps backward they should have been taking. It was a really intense experience for everyone.
Pharrell should have some conversations with people who can help him understand why he should shut the fuck up and just do good work.
I participated in that exercise at a seminar years ago and I thought it was a very powerful demonstration of our circumstances and how everyone there seemed really affected by it.
I was, of course, alllll the way in the back— I’m a woman, WOC, born to a unmarried mother, was on food stamps, English wasn’t my first language, my mother has been incarcerated, we’ve been homeless, etc, etc, etc.
I’ve seen this too often with BM. Once they get access to predominantly white spaces and get some extra zeros in their bank account all of the sudden it’s “racism? I don’t know her” Damon Wayans did a bit in his standup about this.
I’m not surprised. But he like so many others, are gonna learn the hard way that money is not going to shield you from being treated like BM.
It’s similar to many white women when they get ahead thanks to or despite the patriarchy. Those are both “but for” identities and I think successful people in those categories can forget.
This is tragic. He is suppressing votes. The votes of the people who most need to be voting. Sounds like he’s doing some good work with his non-profit. Does he even care that the regime which he apparently believes is just another regime is targeting non-profits, especially Black ones? For someone with his influence and platform to be spouting both sides nonsense in the middle of a fascist takeover is gutting.
The point he makes unravels when you don’t take for granted, as a self-evident point, that division is bad. Division from abuse, oppression, inequality – many people want to stand in division against these things. Do I want to stand divided against a group of people who think it’s a-okay to police women’s bodies and outlaw abortion? Um, yeah? Let’s stoke those divisions because it’s pretty important to assert that I am against certain things and have no interest in both-sides-ing with certain groups of frightening people.
exactly!
He’s ALWAYS been pretty useless & kinda of despicable to me…a dollar store Kanye West😡
Outside of this, what had made you feel this way?
He’s BEEN like this, it’s just the old ” I’m not black, I’m OJ” nonsense. While wealth does offer you a level of protection that it doesn’t for the poors, that pesky race issue will eventually rear it’s head. He’ll find out sooner or later. In the meantime though this is exactly the issue that faces young black men and getting some involved in voting in the first place. Specific targeting from successful people that tell them the system doesn’t keep them back they just need to ” try harder” and get off the ” democratic plantation”.
@dee2 I was searching for this comment. He has BEEN like this! He thinks he’s an alien or a brand new race who remains untouched by nasty old politics. Someone needs to tell his behind: you may not believe in politics but POLITICS BELIEVES IN YOU!
Ummm. When he says he hates politics, isn’t he dividing himself from all the people who believe in voting. What should we do? Have a dictator and never vote again?
Yeah, when people say they hate politics, it usually means they hate the way politics is used to grab for power, or they hate that they can’t get everything they want exactly the way they want it. But it’s really about achieving consensus and making group decisions. With consensus, you have to give and take.
I remember when he was on an episode of Finding Your Roots on PBS here in the US. He discovered that he had slave ancestry and basically walked out. I mean, he’s a black man from the American South so I didn’t think that discovery was really surprising. (I’m a black American with deep roots in the South.) The show had to take the cameras to his house days (weeks?) later to finish out his portion of the episode. He still didn’t want to accept the fact that he has slave ancestry.
I’m bringing this up because after watching that TV show episode, I don’t find Pharrell’s stance in this article surprising. The man sees what he wants to see. He doesn’t want to believe the realities of race relations and how prejudice against black people can affect business. His brain is a utopia, apparently.
How delusional can this dude get?!
lol what a jerk he has become. His boss, the Arnault family are SO close of the macron, Brigitte was the kid’s teacher. And Macron makes things a lot easier economically/politically for his rich friends.
It sounds to me like Skateboi P might be MAGA.
Pharrell’s been too rich for too long. He’s completely lost touch.
This isn’t even new for him. 10, 15 years ago he already declared that he was one of the “new Blacks” who weren’t blaming everything on racism or something delusional like that.
Okay, I’m going to go on a tear. He’s participating in politics by discussing an issue the way it has been framed by politics. That frame is problematic.
To illustrate, the issue of cultural appropriation has been framed as either “stealing” from a culture that isn’t your own or not. Everyone likes to yell about appreciating vs. appropriating and whether it’s okay. But cultural appropriation is really an economic argument: it’s about *who* profits from a culture that isn’t their own and *why.* Sure, Elvis appreciated Black music. But he was a cultural appropriator because he profited massively from it – he could access a mainstream (white) audience that Black musicians were legally barred from accessing. That legal framework was unjust, Elvis profited from the injustice, and this history of racism is invoked in every subsequent conversation about cultural appropriation in the music industry.
Here, DEI/affirmative action/whatever is framed as “hiring someone because they’re Black/POC or not.” That’s an incorrect frame. It assumes diversity has no value in itself, but research indicates otherwise. An organization BENEFITS when it has a more diverse workforce. Markets BENEFIT when producers/sellers are more diverse. You don’t have to defend seeing the value in hiring a seller, an artist, an entertainer who is Black. Just because they’re Black doesn’t mean they’re somehow unqualified. That entire framing is problematic, but here Pharrell is, participating in it. Why not point out that supporting all-white, all-male businesses is a dumb choice because they’re less likely to innovate? Or they’re more likely to overlook whole groups of consumers? Etc. Etc.
THANK YOU. All of this.
Venture capital has overwhelmingly gone to young white males and the statistics on an of those startups actually creating revenue or a profitable salable company are abysmal. It’s great he’s supporting Black entrepreneurs and yes, EVERYONE should want to be the best at what they do when bringing a product to market but dude, mediocre white boys have been getting rewarded for ages. And usually had mommy and daddy pay for their college so they graduate with no debt and a parent financed place to live and financial safety net that lets them go ahead and take the risk of creating a startup.
ETA: I went to go dig up the exact statistics, Harvard professor Shankar Ghosh found that 95% of venture backed startups never deliver their projected ROI.
Shikhar Ghosh, spell check is not my friend.
I would be fine being ok and getting the money. Many entrepreneurs are good enough and white.
It’s one thing to say you don’t do politics if you don’t do anything at all. But Pharrell is doing a lot in other areas. There aren’t enough Black men with access to exclusive spaces and while Pharrell’s comments are tone deaf at best, I’m not to going pull him back down into the crab pot. He’s not the first person to become so jaded by politics that they wash their hands of it. I’ve been there myself.
The difference is you becoming jaded by politics only affects you or, at most, as small circle of people.
Pharrell’s big head running his mouth into a microphone will be seen by (and potentially influence) significantly more people – people whose access to voting is currently being targeted and intentionally suppressed. And their lives are going to be significantly more impacted by the exact politics he eschews.
If folks are feeling jaded by politics (especially politics on a national level), the answer is often to get more involved and do something locally so you can see and feel the impact of ypur contributions. Not check out or try to pretend to be above it.
Poopooing politics at a time when a slovenly sociopath and his crew of law breaking dorks is in office SPECIFICALLY because people stayed home rather than getting out and voting is super dumb and hella tone deaf.
I will say about him what I said on Threads… “Okay Aaron Burr”. And if you’ve seen Hamilton then you will understand that reference perfectly.
Must be nice.
To be fair, the sentiment he’s expressing here isn’t too different than that of the median American citizen. The reasons why Americans have been so traditionally checked out of politics are layered and complex from the classic American ideal of rugged individualism to American exceptionalism to Americans taking democracy for granted because we’ve never had to fight fascism like almost every other country did at one point in history. And that’s to say nothing of the cynicism and disillusionment that is born out of (mostly) unrealistic expectations.
We are just not a society that deeply cares about politics or even the greater, collective good. We’ve spent most of our lives never understanding the fragility of a functional democracy and feeling entitled to the American Dream, without connecting that dream to the policies and institutions that undergird our political power structure. Our society exists as it is because of a series of policy choices.
It’s a huge problem and it’s why so many Americans can’t bother to vote.
Never liked his music & or him because he always came across as inauthentic. Totally felt vindicated hearing his nonsense in that video. Anyhoo, Roland Martin’s response to him was chef’s kiss. https://youtu.be/wT2ri282W4g