Photo: Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty

On Saturday, TheWashington Post— along withUSA Today’s chain of papers, theLos Angeles Times, theCleveland PlainDealerand more outlets across the nation — reported that they willno longer be printing the long-running comic strip after Adams made racist remarksabout the results of aRasmussen poll.

The poll found that 53% of Black Americans agreed with the statement, “It’s okay to be White,” while 26% disagreed and 21% specified they weren’t sure.

Adams, 65, commented on these statistics during a live stream of hisYouTube show.

“If nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with White people…that’s a hate group,” he said. “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…because there is no fixing this.”

“I’m also really sick of seeing video after video of Black Americans beating up non-Black citizens,” Adams added, adding that he blames Black people for not “focusing on education.”

Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty

On Thursday, theWashington Postreceived complaints from readers who demanded the strip be pulled. Aspokesperson for the outletsaid on Saturday, “In light of Scott Adams’s recent statements promoting segregation, theWashington Posthas ceased publication of the Dilbert comic strip.”

However, they added that it was too late to pull the strip from its upcoming print issues, one of them being Sunday’s edition.

According to the outlet, Adams told thePostin a text message regarding the cancellation of his comic strip, “Lots of people are angry, but I haven’t seen any disagreement yet, at least not from anyone who saw the context. Some questioned the poll data. That’s fair.”

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Darrin Bell, the first Black artist to win the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning and creator of comic strip “Candorville” and “Rudy Park,” told thePoston Saturday, “Scott Adams is a disgrace. His racism is not even unique among cartoonists.”

Bell then said Adams’s attitudes aligned with those of the Jim Crow era and more recent examples of White supremacy, including “millions of angry people trying to redefine the word ‘racism’ itself.”

“Any tax code change is racist,” he said, condemning racism and racist laws against “individuals.” However, he added, “You should absolutely be racist whenever it’s to your advantage. Every one of you should be open to making a racist personal career decision.”

A “Dilbert” television show also began airing on UPN in 1999 until it was cancelled a year later. In June 2020, Adams said the series “was the third job I lost for being White.”

According to thePost, other controversial statements Adams made before the cancellation of his comic included a tweet in January 2022 saying that he planned to “self-identify as a Black woman.” He also said Americans were being brainwashed to support Ukraine and praised anti-vaxxers last month.

In May 2022, Adams added a new character named Dave the Black Engineer in “Dilbert” to mock workplace diversity and transgender politics, thePostreported.

The strip had been pulled last year from Lee Enterprises’s 77 newspapers, but that was for a executive reason bigger than cancelling the comic itself.

source: people.com