Musk Says Media 'Is Racist Against Whites,' Defends Anti-Black 'Dilbert' Cartoonist
When Dilbert comic strip creator Scott Adams went on a racist rant last week about Black people being a “hate group” and urging white people to “get the fuck away” from them, it wasn’t a huge surprise. Just like it wasn’t a huge surprise that Twitter CEO Elon Musk would defend Adams and pivot away from the artist’s outrageous comments to a conversation about the alleged “racist” media.
By Saturday, Adams’ strip was pulled from multiple newspapers nationwide.
Sunday, Musk tweeted that the media “was against non-white people,” but now they’re “racist against whites & Asians.”
Musk added:
“Same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America… Maybe they can try not being racist.”
\u201c@monitoringbias For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they\u2019re racist against whites & Asians. \n\nSame thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America.\n\nMaybe they can try not being racist.\u201d— Monitoring Bias (@Monitoring Bias) 1677332686
Since Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter, there’s been a surge of hateful rhetoric.
“Systemic racism requires not only widespread bigotry to be held within a group but also a structural component that allows discrimination and oppression to be imposed on a minority because of an advantage of access and power. A white billionaire from South Africa who recently lost a high-profile racial discrimination case may not be in the best position to offer counsel,” Brian Levin, a civil rights attorney and director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, said about Musk’s comments, according to CNBC.
The Tesla owner is currently embroiled in a workplace discrimination suit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) following complaints after the California Civil Rights Department, formerly known as the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, sued Tesla with claims of widespread racist discrimination at Tesla factories and facilities across the state.
According to the lawsuit, thousands of Black workers at Tesla’s Fremont factory were segregated into the most physically demanding positions and forced into the lowest-level contract roles.
The segregated areas where they worked were called the “porch monkey station,” “the slave ship,” and “the plantation,” and that’s not the worst of it. When Black workers complained, they were retaliated against, ignored, and denied bonuses, promotions, and other opportunities, the lawsuit reads.
In addition to defending racists, Musk was busy this weekend laying off at least 50 employees, The Daily Beast reports. Not even sparing one of its most loyal employees, the head of Twitter payments, Esther Crawford, who, according to The Daily Beast, slept in her office to show her dedication.
Adams’ segregationist outburst, the one that caused his strip to be kicked to the curb, came out of his YouTube channel. A poll from the Rasmussen Reports, a conservative firm, found that nearly half of Black people surveyed disagreed with the statement, “It’s okay to be white.”
“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,” Adams said. “Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed. So I don’t think it makes any sense as a white citizen of America to try to help Black citizens anymore. It doesn’t make sense. There’s no longer a rational impulse. So I’m going to back off on being helpful to Black America because it doesn’t seem like it pays off.”
\u201cSo\u2026. Scott Adams just said the quiet part out loud. \nThere\u2019s a percentage who\u2019s driven past the racist narrative I respect more than most. But something\u2019s gotta change. \nPeople calling him racist, but the video speaks for itself. I\u2019m tired of the violence against white people\u201d— Carolina Patriot (@Carolina Patriot) 1677197488
This isn’t Adams’ first time at the racist rodeo.
In 2016, Hunter wrote extensively about the cartoonist’s support for then-candidate Donald Trump.
“If Trump gets elected, and he does anything that looks even slightly Hitler-ish in office, I will join the resistance movement and help kill him. That’s an easy promise to make, and I hope my fellow citizens would use their Second Amendment rights to rise up and help me kill any Hitler-type person who rose to the top job in this country, no matter who it is,” Adams said, according to Hunter.
On Saturday, Daily Kos’ Mark Sumner wrote that in past podcasts, Adams has said that the January 6 insurrectionists weren’t actually supporters of Trump, but the mob on the U.S. Capitol was a conspiracy—”a conspiracy he blamed on the racist and anti-Semitic ‘replacement theory.’”
In 2022, Variety reported that Adams introduced a Black character to his strip for the first time. “Dave the Black Engineer” was used to denigrate diversity and inclusion in the workplace and transgender identity. “I identify as white,” the character said in one strip.
According to Variety, Adams also claimed, in 2020, that after UPN canceled the Dilbert animated series, it was for “being white” and because “UPN decided it would focus on an African American audience,” alleging it was his “third job lost for being white.”
\u201c@ahmedbest I lost my TV show for being white when UPN decided it would focus on an African-American audience. That was the third job I lost for being white. The other two in corporate America. (They told me directly.)\u201d— Scott Adams (@Scott Adams) 1593393715
As Sumner wrote, Adams’ strip was once featured in over 2,000 newspapers but has since been dumped by hundreds of distributors in a list too long to mention.
Goodbye and good riddance.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
