Update: USA Today, NJ.com, The Star-Ledger, leighvalleylive.com and The Express-Times have also dropped “Dilbert” in response to Scott Adams’ racist rant.
The Dilbert comic strip has been dropped by the Cleveland Plain Dealer after its creator, Scott Adams, went on a racist rant on video.
“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.’ 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,’” the Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn wrote in the Ohio newspaper, describing the content of Adams’ video.
“He says a lot more in the video, mostly hateful and racist, all viewable on YouTube. It’s a staggering string of statements, all but certain to result in the loss of his livelihood. I hate to quote him at all, but I do so to dissuade responses that this is a ‘cancel culture’ decision,” Quinn continued.
In Adams’ video, he mentioned and quoted CNN host Don Lemon’s words about the disparity between Black and white neighborhoods.
“This can’t be fixed. You just have to escape. So that’s what I did. I went to a neighborhood where I have a very low black population,” Adams said. “Because unfortunately, there’s a high correlation between the density — this is according to Don Lemon by the way — so here I’m just quoting Don Lemon when he notes that the when he lived in a mostly black neighborhood, there were a bunch of problems they didn’t see in white neighborhoods.”
He invoked the bootstrap narrative and the stereotype that Black people are lazy and can’t figure out how to succeed in society, resolving to not help them anymore.
“This is a decision based on the principles of this news organization and the community we serve. We are not a home for those who espouse racism,” Quinn wrote. “We certainly do not want to provide them with financial support.”
The comic strip also cited observations of daily videos of Black citizens beating up white citizens as a reason to be careful.
“Adams’ reprehensible statements come during Black History Month, when The Plain Dealer has been publishing stories about the work being performed by so many to overcome the damage done by racist decisions and policy,” Quinn added.
Quinn pointed out that The Plain Dealer is not the first newspaper to drop Dilbert. According to The Daily Beast, 77 outlets published by Lee Enterprises got rid of the comic strip once Adams introduced his first Black character, which poked fun at “woke” culture and the LGBTQ+ community.
