US papers cancel Dilbert cartoonist after ‘racism’ rant
Row erupts as Scott Adams asks subscribers to his Youtube show if they agree ‘it’s OK to be white’
ONE of America’s best-known newspaper cartoonists has been dropped across the country after a racist rant ending in a warning to white people to “get the hell away from black people’’.
The outburst by Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip – a sardonic take on office life since 1989 – triggered a backlash including from The Washington Post. His remarks were described as “hateful and discriminatory” by publishers who said they would no longer provide a platform for Adams’ work.
This was not the first time the cartoonist has found himself at the centre of the culture wars sweeping across the United States. Last September, he was dropped by 77 newspapers after he started poking fun at “wokeness” in his strips, satirising the introduction of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues in the workplace.
In 2019, he was accused of using a mass shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California – in which three people died and 17 were wounded – to publicise an app he had created.
The latest row erupted over his Youtube show, Real Coffee with Scott Adams. Discussion turned to a Rasmussen survey in which respondents were asked if they agreed with the statement: “It’s OK to be white.”
It was a phrase given oxygen by an obscure internet discussion forum and later taken up by white supremacists.
A little over half of the black respondents agreed with the sentiment and this angered Adams, 65. “If nearly half of all blacks are not okay with white people… that’s a hate group,” he said.
“I don’t want to have anything to do with them. And 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… because there is no fixing this.”
Continuing his diatribe, Adams added: “I’m also really sick of seeing video after video of black Americans beating up non-black citizens.”
In response, newspapers faced calls from outraged readers for the Dilbert strip to be dropped.
The USA Today network, a chain which controls more than 300 papers across the country including the Cincinnati Enquirer, Detroit Free Press and Indianapolis Star – said it would no longer publish the Dilbert comic strip owing to recent discriminatory comments by its creator.
Other papers to drop the strip included The Washington Post and
Boston Globe.
Dilbert was also cancelled by The New York Times, which only published it in its international edition. Chris Quinn, the vice-president of content at Ohio’s The Plain Dealer, said dropping the strip was not a difficult decision.
“We are not a home for those who espouse racism,” he wrote. Adams did not take the media backlash quietly, saying he was unfairly being “cancelled.”