Elon Musk Twitter account seen on Mobile with Elon Musk in the background on screen, seen in this … [+]
Twitter CEO Elon Musk called the media “racist” in several tweets on Sunday in a strange reaction to the news that the country’s biggest newspapers were dropping the Dilbert comic strip. Dilbert creator Scott Adams saw his strip pulled from the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, among a host of other newspapers, after he promoted racial segregation in a YouTube video.
In the bizarre video that started everything, Adams cited a Rasmussen poll that asked people how they felt about the term “It’s okay to be white,” a phrase that was started as a racist trolling campaign. Because a percentage of Black respondents said they didn’t like the phrase, Adams argued the only solution was for racial segregation.
“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 in the video that would prompt the backlash.
Musk, who often interacts with Adams on Twitter, took the news that Dilbert was being canceled as an opportunity to argue that American media is racist against “whites and Asians,” an argument for which he provided no evidence.
“For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians. Same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America. Maybe they can try not being racist,” Musk tweeted on Sunday.
One of Musk’s followers responded by saying that while what Adams said wasn’t good, there was truth in what he was saying.
“Adams’ comments weren’t good. But there’s an element of truth to this…it’s complicated. Mainly we’ve leaned into identity with predictable results, and power today is complicated. We were on the right path with colorblindness and need to return to it,” the Twitter user wrote to Musk.
“Exactly,” Musk replied.
Adams published a new YouTube video on Sunday arguing that media outlets were being unfair because there they didn’t cover the full context of what he was saying, while also arguing that he knew what the reaction would be and did it anyway.
Adams said that in the future he’s going to ask all his critics “the demographics of their own neighborhoods.”
“I asked a few people on Twitter, and nobody was living in a Black neighborhood,” Adams said.
“Now, of course they could explain it by saying ‘well, it’s because I wanted to be near my family’. To which I say exactly. You wanted to be near your family, do you know why? Your family doesn’t hate you,” Adams said.
The entire video shows Adams arguing simultaneously that he was misinterpreted because people didn’t hear the proper context, while also saying he knew exactly what he was saying and how it would be interpreted by the media.
“I don’t make mistakes. I don’t think I’ve ever made a mistake… in public. Maybe a few times when I first started out,” Adams rambled in his video on Sunday
“But eventually you get good at it, and you don’t say things you don’t mean and you don’t say things without knowing completely how it’s going to be taken.”
