OPINION: How Did Derrick Jaxn Become The Very Thing He Taught Black Woman To Despise?
On New Year’s Eve 2019, my girlfriend at the time singlehandedly pulled me out of a years-long bout of indecision regarding the topic of my first book by blessing me with ideas about what she, and other Black women, might want to read on the topic of marriage, dating and relationships. She said, “I feel like you can do so much better than that Derrick Jaxn dude.”
I’d not heard of him before that conversation, but I watched a few of his videos per her suggestion. I got past the fact that dude creates all of his videos in his car for some ridiculous reason to realize that Jaxn is a masterclass simp and that my lady was right: I could use my pen to create something more useful and far more genuine than his videos…and I’m on it (albeit glacially).
The news that Jaxn admitted to actually cheating on his wife despite creating an entire platform warning women about men like him is about as surprising a revelation as a white teacher in a small town somewhere doing something racist. Jaxn’s misdeeds were apparently exposed by YouTube personality Tasha K, who came with a fistful of receipts via his mistress, a woman apparently named Candice De Medeiros, who spoke in detail about their affair. (Apparently there is more than one former mistress.) Jaxn was pretty much forced to address his infidelities to his 1.3 million Instagram followers in the cringiest admission video ever. But we’ll get back to that in a bit.
Jaxn is no different from the pastor with the impoverished congregation pushing an S-class Mercedes Benz. He leverages his piety, good looks and extra-medium shirts on his muscular frame to deliver his messages in an unctuous manner designed to impress upon the listener that he is free from the behavior that he bemoans. To his fans, he is (or was) one of the “good ones” – the Black man who stands in diametric opposition to the negative stereotypes of Black men and fidelity, happy to offer his time and energy out of the goodness of his heart to help Black women stave off f---boys, cheaters and the chronically non-committal.
There’s something inherently specious about dudes who monetize telling women the type of men they should choose and avoid. As someone who has written about dating and relationships on and off for nearly a decade and a half, I recognize the need for a certain finesse on the topic; the issue isn’t with Jaxn’s advice per se…it’s with how he delivers it with a complete lack of nuance:
“If he’s doing A, it means B. Run, girl!” Steve Harvey did the same sh-t with his Think Like a Man series, which sucked far more than when he was just making us laugh while cussing on stage in a toupee and blinding suits.
I know several women who recognized problems with Jaxn’s approach before the revelation of his infidelities became public, but I think it’s even easier for men to see through him – he is talking about how we move, after all – which is a large reason why so many dudes are reveling in the schadenfreude of watching him lose all credibility on the path to eventually filling out an application for UPS.
Back to the video...Jaxn sitting there with his wife just gives off “blink-twice-if-you’re-alright-sis” vibes focusing on their interlocked fingers being the closest thing to the camera lens to her sartorial choices (Is there anything wrong with a formless sweatshirt and a beanie that looks like a bonnet from afar? I mean, no, but…) to their expected cliché of leaning on God to fix it all.
I didn’t finish it with the impression that the couple was going to be just fine. In fact, his wife Da’Naia made me even less convinced that all is well in the House of Jackson via her own video on the topic that evokes Jesus’ name so often it basically loses its meaning.
Unsurprisingly, and fortunately for us, the whole mess brought Black Twitter to life this week. There are far more awesome memes than I have the space to post here, so I implore you to check a few out for yourself.
And just when I thought the dude who made an entire video explaining why he doesn’t accept Kevin Hart’s apology for cheating couldn’t possibly have the unmitigated gall to climb his goofy ass into his car and turn on the camera again, he went and did just that as I was writing this piece: a reaction video to his own video in which he speaks about himself in the third person and promotes his book at the end.
Now, he is being appropriately excoriated in the comments section, but his defenders still remain. They insist that he was just telling all of us to do as he says, not as he does. Which is like defending former First Lady Nancy Reagan if she were caught shooting up in the 1980s.
So, to review, what did we learn today, class…?
If a human being is preachy about anything, there’s a pretty damn good chance they have some bulls--t lurking underneath their own blanket. And in regards to those marriage photos he posted during and after the apparent cheating timeline that have a couple hundred thousand “likes” under them, just a reminder that a healthy amount of the idyllic couple photos we see on social media don’t come close to telling the full story.
Of course, none of what happens among the couple and their assorted mistresses is really any of our business. But by creating a platform based on sticking his nose in other folks’ affairs and instructing women to do certain things, only to gaslight them for trusting him to live up to his own message, he pretty much made it our business.
Hopefully Derrick Jaxn will be a footnote and cautionary tale in a few months from now…and nothing else. If you cop his book at this point, I suppose that’s between you, your God and your checking account.
Dustin J. Seibert is a native Detroiter living in Chicago. He loves his own mama slightly more than he loves music and exercises every day only so his French fry intake doesn’t catch up to him. Find him at wafflecolored.com.
