Why we fired ‘Dilbert’ from our comics page: Racist comments on a racist poll | Editorial

You may have seen the short note on our front page that we are dropping the comic strip “Dilbert.”

And we believe you, our readers, deserve a detailed explanation why.

The decision is a corporate one, ultimately made by McClatchy Newspapers and affecting all our newspapers, serving about 30 markets across the country.

However, it is a decision that the Editorial Board of The Eagle strongly supports, because of the blatantly racist remarks made by Dilbert’s creator, Scott Adams.

Those remarks, on the “Real Coffee with Scott Adams” YouTube show, spun off a recent poll by the Rasmussen Reports polling firm (more about them later) that asked Americans if they support the statement “It’s okay to be white.”

According to that poll, 42% of Black respondents said they “strongly agree,” 11% said they “somewhat agree,” 21% said they were “not sure,” 8% said they “somewhat disagree” and 18% said they “strongly disagree.”

Adams added up the strongly disagrees, somewhat disagrees and the not sures, concluding that “add them together, that’s 47% of black respondents were not willing to say it’s okay to be white.”

He then proceeded to call Black people “a hate group,” and told his viewers “The best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people (then he said it again with an F-bomb for emphasis) 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, you know, I have a very low Black population.”

As most people who say really, really dumb things do, Adams has since tried to rationalize his remarks as being taken out of context by the media.

And, to an extent, they were. The context is actually considerably worse than has been widely reported.

Adams also made this bizarre claim: “I’ve been identifying as black for a while, years now, because I like to be on the winning team . . . As of today, I’m going to reidentify as white, ‘cause I don’t want to be a member of a hate group. I’d accidentally joined a hate group.”

And later he added: “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’s no longer a rational impulse.”

Adams has the right to say whatever he wants. We can, and have, made a decision that we don’t want to be associated with those kinds of views in any way, shape or form.

And lest you think we’re succumbing to some sort of “woke mob” mentality, we can assure you that’s not the case.

The last time we dropped a comic for similar reasons, it was “Non Sequitur” in 2019. That was because cartoonist Wiley Miller had hidden a vulgar message directed at President Donald Trump in one of the panels.

And the real author of Adams’ downfall is Rasmussen, because its polling question was not as innocent as it might appear to be on its face.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, the phrase “It’s okay to be white” has long been associated with the white supremacist movement.

The idea was to take a seemingly inoffensive slogan and weaponize it against liberal and Black Americans, who could be condemned online for disagreeing with its underlying context of white supremacy.

It’s not a fair question to put to Black people who are aware of its racist origin and intent.

Rasmussen was once a legitimate polling firm. But a YouTube video by Mark Mitchell, its head pollster, shows how much that’s changed.

In the online video announcing the poll results, he crowed that it would “literally melt the brain of a mainstream journalist” because “it conclusively undermines the current racial orthodoxy.”

He tries to play innocent when it comes to “It’s okay to be white.”

“All we did was ask very simple questions that should be uncontroversial,” he said.

Rasmussen dragged racist bait, Adams picked it up. And now, his comic strip is being dropped by practically every reputable newspaper in America.

We’re proud to be one of them. White or Black, there’s no place where this is okay.