Andrews McMeel Universal, the company that syndicates “Dilbert,” said it is cutting ties with the comic strip’s creator, Scott Adams, following his racist comments about black Americans which led hundreds of newspapers across the country to drop the satirical cartoon.
In a recent rant on his YouTube channel, Scott Adams, the creator of the “Dilbert” comic strip, advocated for white people to self-segregate from black people because black Americans carry attitudes that “can’t be fixed" and went on to call black people "a hate group."
Adams’ comments on Wednesday came in response to a poll from the firm Rasmussen Reports that said 53% of Black Americans agreed with the statement, “It’s OK to be White.”
The Anti-Defamation League has noted that the phrase emerged on the infamous message board 4chan in 2017 as a trolling campaign and has a “long history” in the white supremacist movement.
Adams said he previously identified as black and called on white people to "get the hell away from black people."
“I've been identifying as black for a while, years now, because I like you know I like to be on the winning team,” Adams said, leaning towards the camera with his hands clasped together.
“But it turns out that nearly half of that team doesn't think I'm okay to be white... [so] as of today I'm going to re-identify as white because I don't want to be a member of a hate group. I had accidentally joined a hate group. So, if you know nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with white people according to this poll..., that's a hate group.
"That's a hate group, and I don't want to have anything to do with it. And I would say, you know, 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 f*** away... because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.”
Scott Adams' career is toast, but he has one supporter
“Reframe Your Brain,” Adams' upcoming book, will no longer be published by the world’s largest book publisher Penguin Random House, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, due to Adams' racist rant.
"My publisher for non-Dilbert books has canceled my upcoming book and the entire backlist."
Scott Adams
"My publisher for non-Dilbert books has canceled my upcoming book and the entire backlist," the cartoonist wrote on Twitter. "Still no disagreement about my point of view. My book agent canceled me too."
However, Adams does appear to have one supporter in Elon Musk. The Twitter CEO didn’t condemn Adams’ statement but instead said the media was racist. For a “very long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians,” Musk tweeted. “Same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America. Maybe they can try not being racist.”