Cleveland‘s prominent newspaper, The Plain Dealer, is dropping its Dilbert comic strip from the publication after the creator of the popular cartoon went on a racist rant. Chris Quinn, editor of The Plain Dealer, said in a statement that “this is not a difficult decision.”
“Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, went on a racist rant this week on his Coffee with Scott Adams online video show, and we will no longer carry his comic strip in The Plain Dealer,” Quinn stated.
According to the newspaper’s statement, Adams said Black people are a hate group. Citing a recent Rasmussen survey, the comic creator said nearly half of all Black people do not agree with the phrase “It’s okay to be white.”
“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,” Adams said in the video.
The creator continued to unravel his rant on the YouTube stream. Adams said he identified as Black for a while because he “wanted to be on the winning team,” but has now chosen to be white again because he “doesn’t want to be a member of a hate group.”
The Dilbert creator was also dropped from 77 newspapers published by Lee Enterprises last year. According to the Plain Dealer, the newspapers made that decision after Adams introduced his first Black character in an effort to mock “woke” culture and the LGBTQ community.
The Plain Dealer will still feature some Dilbert cartoons in its pages for the next week because the comics are printed in advance. The newspaper will then replace the comic with a gray box until it decides on the next step.
“We are part of Advance Local, and the leaders in all Advance Local newsrooms independently have made the same decision we did to stop running the strip,” The Plain Dealer stated. “That includes newspapers in Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Alabama, Massachusetts and Oregon.”
Adams’ art has been featured in newspapers for three decades.
