Dilbert Cartoonist Dropped From Hundreds Of Newspapers

By Isaac White.

The long-running comic strip “Dilbert” by Scott Adams has been removed from newspapers across the United States as a result of the cartoonist’s comments that white people should “stay the heck away from” black Americans and that black Americans should be considered a “hate group.”

After Scott Adams posted his racist diatribe on YouTube, several publications, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the USA Today network of of newspapers, stated that they would no longer run the “Dilbert” comic strip. When asked by the Washington Post how many newspapers still carried the strip, which was a workplace satire he started in 1989, Adams stated to The Post that “by Monday, around zero” publications would carry the strip. Adams isn’t far off as reportedly hundreds of papers have dropped the cartoon.

A statement was issued by Andrews McMeel Universal in which it was said that the company would be “severing our relationship” with Adams. This termination would apply to “all areas of our business” including the cartoonist and “Dilbert,” the statement said.

Adams, who was celebrated at one time, has drawn criticism for promotion of far-right ideologies and conspiracy theories for several years. The spark for his racist rant was the results of a Rasmussen poll which found that a slim majority of Black Americans agreed with the statement “It’s okay to be White.” This is a phrase that is sometimes associated with racist memes. Adams has been entertaining far-right ideologies and conspiracy theories for several years.

“If nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with White people … that’s a hate group,” Adams said on his live-streaming YouTube show. “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.”

The 65-year-old Adams chastised African Americans for not being “focused on education” and stated, “I’m also really sick of seeing video after video of Black Americans beating up non-Black individuals.”

The public let known their outrage at the cartoonist’s racist rant, demanding action from the news outlets who publish his work. Papers across the country began receiving comments and emails from readers demanding that the strip be terminated.

The USA Today Network issued a statement that stated they, “will no longer publish the Dilbert comic due to recent discriminatory comments by its creator.” The network of newspapers that is owned by Gannett is in charge of more than 300 publications, some of which include the Arizona Republic, the Indianapolis Star, the Detroit Free Press, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Austin American-Statesman.

The Washington Post released a statement confirming they will discontinue publishing the comic strip. “In light of Scott Adams’s recent statements promoting segregation, The Washington Post has ceased publication of the Dilbert comic strip,” a spokesperson for the newspaper said.

In an editors’ letter, Chris Quinn, Vice President of content for Advance Ohio, publisher of Plain Dealer, stated that pulling “Dilbert” was “not a difficult decision.” “We are not a home for those who espouse racism,” Quinn wrote.

The Vice President of content for MLive Media Group, John Hiner, who oversees eight Michigan-based outlets wrote, “MLive has zero tolerance for racism.” The San Antonio Express-News wrote, “These statements are offensive to our core values.” Four times in the past nine months the L.A. Times had rerun the comic “when the new daily strip did not meet our standards,” and went further to say they will stop publication of the strip completely. The New York Times also reported they will remove the comic strip from their international edition which was the only place their outlet published the cartoon.

The first Black artist to win the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning, Darrin Bell, told the Washington Post, “Scott Adams is a disgrace.” He continued, “His racism is not even unique among cartoonists.” Bell sees Adams’ worldview as similar to the Jim Crow era and white supremacist views recently on display across the U.S. that includes “millions of angry people trying to redefine the word ‘racism’ itself.”

Adams did try to redefine racism on another episode of his YouTube show. His words, which he said were taken out of context, seemed to define racism as almost any political engagement, and he presented a lengthy justification of them.

“Any tax code change is racist,” he said at one point in the show. Adams denounced racism against “individuals” and racist laws, but said, “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.”

Adams further lamented that he did irreparable harm to his career. “Most of my income will be gone by next week,” he told about 3,000 live-stream viewers. “My reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed. You can’t come back from this, am I right? There’s no way you can come back from this.”

Controversial figure Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter and CEO of Tesla, showed support for Adams on his Twitter platform, tweeting that it is the media that is “racist against whites and Asians.”

At the comic strip peak it ran in more than 2,000 newspapers and Adams won the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award in 1998. The strip even sparked a television show that appeared on UPN from 1999 to 2000.

The appreciation that Adams had for Donald Trump during the presidential election of 2016 was one of the factors that originally contributed to the transformation in Adams’s public image. Since that time, he has increasingly aligned himself with views that are considered to be extreme.