The Outstater
Goodbye, Dilbert
THIS MORNING my egregiously silly local newspaper declared that it is taking a most serious stand on the highest moral ground. In a one-paragraph front-page notice it canceled the comic strip, “Dilbert.”
The strip is drawn by Scott Adams, winner of the national Reuben Award for Best Newspaper Comic Strip. Adams made a comment that the editors judged “racist.” That’s all they think we need to know. Courage displayed. Postured assumed. Verdict delivered. End of story.
But as in all woke executions, it takes some digging to learn what exactly was said and in what context. Keep in mind that the accused is a humorist. He makes his living saying outrageous things.
It all happened during an interview in which the results of a national poll by Rasmussen came up. The poll asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement, “It’s OK to be white.” Forty-seven percent of black respondents answered that either it was not OK to be white or that they weren’t sure. Here is Adams’ reaction:
“If nearly half of all blacks are not OK with white people — according to this poll, not according to me — 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 them. And I would say, y’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.”
Gasp!
Lost in the pearl-clutching was that Adams was wrong about the poll. “That’s not what the poll says,” argued the political columnist John Derbyshire. “What it says is that nearly half of all blacks are not OK with white people asserting their whiteness. Perhaps they just don’t like identitarianism of any variety.”
So, all things considered, what we have is an outrageous comment from a person who makes a living being outrageous. Off with his head!
Maybe, though, the more thoughtful at the beheading would be interested to know that black communities do have a problem related to the flight of whites (and, for that matter, blacks). The problem is crime, justified some say by sociological conditions, but crime nonetheless. Perhaps Adams’ bit of advice was even superfluous. Derbyshire says that — like it or not, and we don’t — national patterns of residential and educational choice show that whites already are fleeing as fast as the law allows.
Why? You can blame racism and we won’t argue. But the fact that black males aged 18-24 are nearly 28 times as likely to be violent offenders than their representation in the national population also might have something to do with it. Now, according to Rasmussen, you can add attitude to the calculation.
The point here is that a national pollster thought it important to ask a racially provocative question and the black community responded in a shocking way indicates there are profound social changes afoot in America.
Summarily firing a cartoonist didn’t address them. — tcl
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