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Dilbert Creator Scott Adams: ‘I Decided to Pay’ High Price of Free Speech to Have a Conversation About Race
Dilbert is gone...not in some abstract sense , but dropped by syndicate, all papers. That's it..kaput.
First Kanye, and now Scott Adams. 48 hours to destroy your career. Like Kanye he didn't recant and instead doubled down, but at least he still has his twitter account. How many people are going to pay read Dilbert from Scott's personal website? Probably not enough to recover the lost revenue (as he said, he paid a high price). He still has his youtube account, but he's likely on thin ice there. At least he is good friends with Elon Musk, so his Twitter account should be safe. But damn. I feel mixed about this as to if this was a good move on his part ,or what he hopes to get from destroying his career, connections, etc.
Not having watched the Youtube video I am not sure if I should even respond, but I did read the linked article, where Adams claims he
He also professes he believes in judging people at the individual level. How you go from the above to "stay away from black people" (his purported cancellation-causing message) makes me scratch my head. Either he didn't say that or he did and it's a wild leap of logic.
Reading through the responses herr I am not sure what people are saying they believe, or that 'everyone agrees with.' It infuriates me (well, annoys me) when this sort of secret handshaking goes on here.
sometimes what people say is not what they mean. an outlet may report it but a lot of times how outlets report things is based on what they say. analysis on self descriptions, when not central to their story, I find is often glossed over (for good reason I might add).
from my perspective it's pretty clear that Scott Adams has been right-wing for quite some time. he leaned hard into trump during the 2016 election cycle and it's clear he's not really a leftist. most liberals i think many liberals that i've encountered online have known this ever since... well ever since that 2016 election cycle.
i think if you scroll through his youtube channel that pokes through a bit. like the "i'm renouncing my blackness" thing is pretty much completely comical in its sincerity.
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His point was more group-based. Basically asking if you would happily partake in a group knowing half of the people in the group disliked you. He made the comparison of asking if a black person would feel comfortable moving to a neighborhood where every home was decked out in MAGA gear. Then when he got flack he asked people giving him flack if they lived in a black neighborhood. He also repeatedly stresses that, as you mentioned, his point entirely does not apply to your relationship with individuals.
So basically that was his angle. My personal verdict is "he has a point and is not a racist", not sure how I feel about his choice of means to make this point.
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It is the very interesting case of statistical discrimination. If I know 60% of Group X are likely to do bad thing Y, do I avoid a particular member of Group X if I have no knowledge of that individual? Is that wrong to do so?
What if a trusted intermediary vouches for that individual? If you then associate with that individual (but not general Xs for fear of Y) does that change the racist calculus?
You almost never have "no knowledge" of an individual. No one is going to think Uncle Phil is more likely to do "bad things" than some 19 year old white dude with face tattoos and a shitty demeanor. You narrow people down by 2-5 subgroup levels just by seeing them, or becoming aware of their existence in a particular context.
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