The iconic comic strip Dilbert is being removed by hundreds of newspapers across America due to comments made by its creator, Scott Adams. In citing a Rasmussen poll concluding that 47 percent of black people either rejected or were unsure on the question of whether “it’s OK to be white,” Adams advised, among other things, that white people should “get the hell away” from black people.
Adams made the remarks on his daily Real Coffee with Scott Adams podcast. (Relevant portion begins at 13:30 into the video.)
Outlets from NPR to The Washington Post were in lockstep in referring to Adams’ remarks as a “rant.” While Adams did indeed say some controversial things, referring to the cartoonist’s laid-back delivery of the lines as a “rant” is questionable at best.
Commenting on the Rasmussen poll, Adams said: “They said, ‘Do you agree or disagree with the statement, “It’s OK to be white?”‘ … Twenty-six percent of blacks said, ‘No, it’s not OK to be white.’ Twenty-one percent weren’t sure. Add them together, that is 47 percent of black respondents were not willing to say it’s OK to be white.”
While 53 percent of blacks thought it was OK to be white, only 51 percent of Democrats agreed with that statement. Only 73 percent of Republicans agreed with the statement.
Adams joked that he has been “identifying” as black for a couple of years as a way of mocking “woke” culture. But the Rasmussen poll caused him to rethink the joke.
“As of today I’m going to re-identify as white because I don’t want to be a member of a hate group,” Adams proclaimed. “If nearly half of all blacks are not OK with white people, according to this poll, not according to me … that’s a hate group.”
Adams was not done: “I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people.”
Among those calling Adams’ remarks a “racist rant” was the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, went on a racist rant this week on his Coffee with Scott Adams online video show, and we will no longer carry his comic strip in The Plain Dealer,” wrote the paper’s editor, Chris Quinn.
“This is not a difficult decision,” Quinn continued. “Adams said Black people are a hate group, citing a recent Rasmussen survey which, he said, shows nearly half of all Black people do not agree with the phrase ‘It’s okay to be white.'”
Gannett, which publishes more than 300 American newspapers, also chose to remove Dilbert from its pages.
“Recent discriminatory comments by the creator, Scott Adams, have influenced our decision to discontinue publishing his comic. While we respect and encourage free speech, his views do not align with our editorial or business values as an organization,” the chain, which publishes the USA Today Network of newspapers, said in a statement.
In a related story, Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, accused the American mainstream media of its own brand of racism.
“The media is racist,” Musk tweeted. “For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians. Same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America. Maybe they can try not being racist.”
Lost in all of the virtue signaling and the canceling of Adams and his creation are the results of the poll itself.
Left-wingers argue that the phrase “It’s OK to be white” was created by racist right-wingers with the intention of turning it into a white-supremacy slogan, and thus the large numbers of blacks and Democrats who answered that it wasn’t OK to be white. The Anti-Defamation League, in fact, declared the phrase “It’s OK to be white” a hate chant. The Rasmussen poll didn’t mention it as a “white supremacy” slogan in their question.
If you watch to the “rant” in its full context, you’ll see that Adams, who describes himself as a “liberal,” was clearly doing something of a comedy bit when discussing race relations. Using the Rasmussen poll in the way he did was little more than a way to broach the subject.
Do 47 percent of blacks and 49 percent of Democrats really believe that it’s not OK to be white? Perhaps it’s as the Left believes, and the respondents were only commenting on the “it’s OK to be white” trope that certain groups were attempting to make a slogan a few years back.
Or, perhaps, this is the inevitable result of education systems allowing the evil of critical race theory (CRT) to be taught uncritically in our schools. Even in states where it’s not legal to teach CRT, many of the same ideas have become embedded in so-called DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) training. Could those ideas actually be the genesis of this “it’s not OK to be white” ideal that so many appear to hold?
