Editor's Note: Bad Takes is a column of opinion and analysis.
Plenty of us find little to laugh about in newspaper comics, but the cancellation of Dilbert from hundreds of U.S. periodicals has brought some unexpected mirth.
The strip's author, Scott Adams, ran his reputation through the office shredder late last month by sharing what he later conceded were "super-racist" comments on his YouTube channel. The editors at the Express-News were among those who wasted no time in dropping the strip, saying they're "not obliged to give [Adams] a platform and financial support."
In the offending clip, Adams says he's dedicated his life to trying to help Black people, then cites a Rasmussen poll which he says shows that "nearly half of that team doesn't think I'm OK to be white."
Adams continues: "So, 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. And 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. Just get the fuck away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. 'Cause there's no fixing this. 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 ... ."
He goes on: "So, I think it makes no sense whatsoever as a white citizen of America to try to help Black citizens anymore. It doesn't make sense. It is no longer a rational impulse. And so, I'm going to back off from being helpful to Black America because it doesn't seem like it pays off. I've been doing it all my life and the only outcome is I get called a racist. It makes no sense to help Black Americans if you're white. It's over. Don't even think it's worth trying."
Notice the apparent speed at which Adams went from posturing as an aspirant white savior to advocating full-on neo-segregationist white flight. But also note something odd about the timeline: he intentionally moved to a neighborhood with few Black residents well before he'd ever read the poll that allegedly triggered his change of heart. Adams has also been a longtime defender of the last wet fart of the white majority, Donald Trump, who declared following the 2017 Unite The Right rally that "very fine people" can march alongside neo-Nazis.
For the record, the poll that set Adams off was complete troll manure. Rasmussen Reports is s a right-wing polling agency with a penchant for loaded wording. The question they asked 117 Black respondents last month read, "Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: 'It's okay to be white'?"
At first blush, that sounds like an innocuous no-brainer, and over half of Blacks polled expressed their agreement. Except, according to the Anti-Defamation League, the statement itself is a white nationalist meme targeting diversity initiatives on college campuses.
"Given this history, it makes a lot more sense why a quarter of Black Americans might have some hesitation in signing off on the sentiment," diversity, equity and inclusion consultant Pamela Denise Long wrote in Newsweek.
Reputable polling firms try their best to use unambiguous language. If a poll asked whether you agree or disagree that "White lives matter" or "All lives matter," you might pause and wonder, "Am I supposed to interpret these phrases literally or as politicized slogans?" Your response would therefore have fuck-all to do with whether you felt those of European descent or those with paler skin tones should enjoy the human right to exist.
Only near-universal assent to the inviolability of whiteness would have satisfied Adams, however. On a "feeling thermometer" of 0-to-100°, the 2020 American National Election Studies survey found 62% of Black Americans rated whites warmly, and only 18% at below 50°.
Close to 99% of nonwhites approve of interracial marriage, according to Gallup; evidently white people are okay enough to marry one's son or daughter off to. And according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey of race relations, "Whites, Blacks, Hispanics and Asians are about equally likely to say they often or sometimes hear comments or jokes that can be considered racially insensitive from friends or family members who share their racial background. About half in each group say this rarely or never happens."
Not exactly knock-down proof for designating one race or another "a hate group."
Although Adams said in a subsequent interview that he would apologize if data proved the opposite of his original point, he's yet to issue that apology.
Indeed, two days after the tirade, he seemed to dig in deeper.
"We're at the point where 100% of people are racists and it'd be kind of stupid to act like it's not true," the comic creator said, adding that both affirmative action and reparations are "racist by definition" and that "'racist' is no longer a bad word."
But racism isn't reducible to fleeting subjective preferences or "thinking in racial terms." It's chiefly about the systemic furthering of racial subordination, or what economist Glenn Loury called "the withholding of the presumption of equal humanity."
Adams' self-reinforcing rationalizations have been particularly asinine, from claiming his critics don't understand "hyperbole" to contradictorily claiming "no one disagrees with me." But white Americans who continue to donate to the NAACP disagree. Those who don't consider remedies for past discrimination "racist" disagree. Those who marched with Black Lives Matter disagree.
"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression," the saying goes.
Blacks are 12-14% of the US population and hold less than 2% of the nation's wealth, while whites comprise 60% and hold nearly 90%. Learning that fact doesn't mean "demonizing" — in Adams' words — those with less melanin in their upper epidermis. It's OK not to be Black. It's not OK to abandon the centuries-long dream of multiracial solidarity in America because you woke up one day and read a bogus poll.
Adams, the face of white fragility this month, represents millions of racists who have given up on Black people. But as historical investigations including the 1619 Project show, we owe what semblance of democracy we enjoy to the fact that Black Americans didn't give up on us.
And what's a more apt example of so-called "cancel culture" — that newspapers stopped running a comic strip after a cartoonist went on a racist harangue or that states like Texas explicitly forbade the teaching of the 1619 Project in public schools?
We eagerly await the Rasmussen poll on that one.
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