Ugh. Polls.
Some misguided fool at the conservative polling operation Rasmussen Reports convinced the gang to ask 1,000 randomly chosen Americans two questions:
1. Do you agree or disagree with this statement: “It’s OK to be white”?
2. Do you agree or disagree with this statement: “Black people can be racist, too”?
Question #1 is unforgivable—incompetent, irresponsible, unethical. “It’s OK to be white” was designed as parallel “gotcha!” linguistic retort to “Black lives matter,” an equivalent to “When did you stop beating your wife?” What does it mean? Agreeing with “It’s OK to be white” might mean, “I reject the premise behind Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory!” It also could mean, “Of course it’s okay to be white; any other position is racist.”
Disagreeing with the statement might mean, “I see what you’re doing there: trying to weasel out of white society’s obligation to recognize the intrinsic injustices it inflicts on black citizens!” Or it might mean, “I hate those honky bastards! They’re all the same: evil.” Without defining terms, no poll is legitimate.
Rasmussen should be ashamed of itself.
Poll question #2 is better. The claim that blacks can’t be racist, which is like claiming they are some kind of higher sub-species of human being, has long been an unethical dodge employed by race-baiting, anti-white demagogues like Al Sharpton, Joy Reid and Ibram Xolani Kendi. Determining how many people actually believe this garbage is useful, just as determining how many people think the Holocausr never happened, that the world is flat, or the Joe Biden is a wonderful President is useful.
Rasmussen found that 72% of those polled agreed with the statement, “It’s OK to be white.” Blacks polled barely agreed, at 53%. Who knows what those results mean? The conservative Washington Examiner spins them this way: “Voters are not buying into “woke” racial politics and anti-white attacks from liberals, according to a new survey on the simmering ‘it’s OK to be white’ pushback.” That’s pure confirmation bias. 28% of the country, almost a third, thinks it’s not okay to be white, and the Examiner sees that as good news? If the poll had any validity or reliability at all and were not utter crap, that would be terrifying news.
Seventy-nine % of those polled agreed that “Black people can be racist, too,” including 66% of blacks. That’s a bit more positive; after all, more than 21% of the public is gullible, ignorant, and couldn’t give you the dates of the Civil War within 20 years.
For some reason, this exercise in awful, unprofessional click-bait polling caused “Dilbert” creator and flagrant iconoclast Scott Adams to flip out.
During his “Real Coffee with Scott Adams” online video program, he summarized the poll as showing that “nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with White people,” and thus, he concluded, “That’s a hate group.” Noting that 26% of Black respondents said it’s “not OK to be White” and 21% said “they weren’t sure,”Adams said: “That’s 47% of Blacks not willing to say it’s OK to be White! That’s like a real poll. This just happened.”
Adams is supposed to be smarter than that. Is he just kidding and mocking people who treat polls as decrees from the mount? If so, he needs to do a better job making his intentions clear.
Adams kept digging a metaphorical hole, saying that the poll demonstrated that there is “no fixing” current racial tensions in America, so white people ought to live in largely segregated neighborhoods. “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,” Adams said. “Just get the fuck away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.”
Satire? Self-immolation? A psychotic break?
Adams then claimed he had already self-segregated by moving to an area “with a very low black population.” Then he finally shifted into obvious satire—at least I hope it was—adding, “I’ve been identifying as black for a while because I like to be on the winning team. And I like to help. I always thought if you help the black community, that’s sort of the biggest lever, you could find, the biggest benefit. But it turns out that nearly half of that team doesn’t think I’m okay to be white,” Adams concluded. So now, he says, thanks to the poll, Adams is “going to re-identify as white” because he doesn’t “want to be a member of a hate group.”
“I’m going to back off from being helpful to black Americas because it doesn’t seem like it pays off,” Adams said, either with his tongue in his cheek or an aneurysm in his frontal lobe. “The only outcome is that I get called a racist.”
“We should be friendly,” Adams went on. “I’m not saying we should start a war or do anything bad. I’m just saying, get away.”
What’s going on here? I haven’t a clue. A bad poll seems like a particularly dumb reason to sabotage your reputation, credibility and career while exacerbating racial tensions.
Maybe Scott is just sick of drawing Dilbert.
Ethics Alarms 
Scott Adams is correct, and the results obtained through that poll is not an isolated piece of information. There’s a lot of anti-white (not to mention anti-Asian) discrimination among black people. Everybody knows that. I’m a Latino and I was riding a bycicle through a black neighborhood in near Orlando, FL and I was insulted so many times because apparently I’m a white trash. It was my first visit to the US.
Everybody tells me about similar experiences. Blacks are the most racist group. You can pretend this is not true though, but just look at the innumerable amount of videos of black kids attacking anything white.
This sure as hell caught my eye. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11789215/Florida-schoolboy-17-beats-female-teaching-aide-pulp-took-Nintendo-Switch-away.html When did kicking unconscious people become okay? Are we supposed to not see the color of the assailant and his victim? I thought color blindness was white supremacist?
Then there’s this. Mental health meets criminality.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11790563/Mental-health-advocate-launches-defense-66-boy-17-attacked-teaching-aide.html
Maybe Scott Adams simply articulated what most white people are beginning to quietly think to themselves. Why be an ally when you will always be guilty. That is the same issue I had with the Catholic Church.
You have to follow Scott Adams over time to really understand what he believes and what he’s on about.
He regularly presents both sides of an argument and calls out everyone as necessary.
He talks about it again today at about 20 minutes into his YouTube presentation. I’m watching on Locals which starts earlier and generally goes longer. It’s worth a watch.
Adams generally causes me to think more deeply about something daily; just like Ethics Alarms.
Jeez, I sure hope I’m a little bit clearer on my positions than Adams this time. In related news: “The USA Today Network will no longer publish the Dilbert comic due to recent discriminatory comments by its creator.”
No surprise there.
The USA Today Network will no longer publish the Dilbert comic due to recent discriminatory comments by its creator.”
Basing my opinion on only what was included in this EA essay, I did not find any of the comments he made discriminatory. Who among us does not seek to live in communities whose residents mirror our, culture, ideals and values? Based on statements included here it appears that he is lamenting the fact that race relations have deteriorated badly in the last decade to the point that even those once willing to walk arm in arm with their black brethren to obtain equal rights are not willing to self-flagellate as oppressors.
While I don’t necessarily agree with his statement ““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,” the statement is not discriminatory. I read his comments to mean that you will be damned if you do and damned if you don’t so just walk away.
Illegal discrimination occurs when you prevent some protected class from enjoying the same opportunities in public accommodations, housing, or employment as the majority. Adams is not advocating that you not sell to a black family nor is he suggesting that legal segregation be imposed. Let’s keep in mind that majority Black communities are that way because Blacks also choose to live in areas in which their culture, language patterns and values are dominant. In fact, when urban revitalization takes place Blacks are very vocal about the potential of gentrification which to them means that whites will buy up the new homes and force them out as property taxes rise. The demand that Blacks have a need to see people who look like them in the classrooms, TV and in employment is evidence that people of every race prefer to live, work and associate with like people. BET (Black Entertainment Television) along with sundry other Black awards programs capitalizes on this fact. Will the media see this as discriminatory?
Advising people to avoid other groups may be shortsighted and wrong but the onus of moving is on the person who chooses to relocate away from those who see him as threatening. This is what many are asking for when they demand “safe paces”. Every decision a person makes involves discrimination and not all discrimination is based on hate of another. Back in the late sixties and seventies the term white flight was coined as predominately white neighborhoods began to shift. I grew up in one of those changing communities in Baltimore city and while most of our neighbors headed for the county we remained. I experience first-hand why so many feared the changing of the community. Hate did not drive people out of the city. It was fear, mostly irrational fear but as the neighborhood changed whites learned that the new neighbors resented the fact that they were whitening their neighborhood. It was not fun running the gauntlet to school where you would be customarily robbed of your lunch money. That was then. I cannot even imagine living in my old neighborhood as a white man. The point is choosing to live in community x versus community may be discriminatory by virtue of the fact that all choices require discrimination but to attribute that to hate is unfounded.
USA Today is a left leaning publication and is pulling Dilbert to pander to its woke audience. I wonder- will USA Today continue carrying the comic strip “The Boondocks” which promotes racial animus towards whites daily?
Chris Marschner,
Your comment brings up an interesting dynamic.
When I lived in South Carolina, our neighbors were black. In general, neighborhoods were mixed (as I recall).
That was one of the legacies of slavery. Though there was some kind of racial caste, slaves and masters lived together and interacted regularly. While the society may have been segregated, it was more of a social segregation than a physical one.
In the north, it was the opposite, there was a physical separation of the races, even if they were socially integrated.
Of course, this is a gross oversimplification of the reality of the situation, but there is something to it.
-Jut
I found myself saying that the mistake Scott Adams made was that he said the quiet part out loud, you NEVER say the quiet part out loud. Then I started thinking that a lot of folks I know, either black or white liberal, would say that wasn’t the point, the point was that he said it at all, he exposed his thoughts for all to say, and those thoughts were racist and ugly. Both of those statements are true, and neither are mutually exclusive. However, the fact is that we’ve both seen almost the exact same opinions expressed with the colors reversed at least a half dozen times, and this level of pearl-clutching cancellation never happened. So… ?
Are most black people, especially of the sort available to pollsters, even aware of the metanarrative around “It’s OK to be white?” That kerfuffle seems largely restricted to rightist bombthrowers and very online leftists. As the margin of error on the poll was 3%, perhaps not even a majority of black respondents could bring themselves to agree with the straight reading of the phrase. What should white people do with that information? Especially when it is reinforced by heuristic determination? What makes it “sabotage” to encourage whites to react in a rational manner to this knowledge? Because it is “wrong” or because Adams “should” know that whites are not allowed to act in their own interest and anyone encouraging them to do so will be unpersoned?
Excellent points all. It was incompetent and irresponsible for Rasmussen to use that trope for exactly those reasons.
The latest: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dilbert-comic-strip-creator-scott-adams-racist-remarks/
Adams is no dummy. Surely he expected this reaction to his clumsy, ham-handed comments? He could have made his points in a provocative, defensible manner. Saying blacks belong to a “hate group” and that whites need to “get away from them.” is asking for exactly the reaction he’s getting. Roseanne’s self-destruction I could understand: she’s a crude idiot. This is mystifying. It’s like Steve McQueen’s (Vin’s) story in The Magnificent Seven about the guy who stripped off all his clothes and jumped into a cactus patch, saying, “It seemed like a good idea at the time…”