Several newspapers in US drop Dilbert cartoon strip following racist rant by creator Sott Adams

Dilbert. Image: Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)/Wikimedia Commons

Washington/IBNS: Several US newspapers have dropped a popular cartoon strip  Dilbert after its creator made a racist remark.

In a video on YouTube, Scott Adams, who is white, said black Americans were part of a “hate group” and that white people should “get the hell away” from them, reports BBC.

Among those media outlets that have dropped the Dilbert cartoon strip are the USA Today network, which operates dozens of newspapers, and the Los Angeles Times, the British media reported.

His comments were made in response to a survey conducted by the firm Rasmussen Reports in which people were asked to agree or disagree with the phrase: “It’s OK to be white.”

The phrase is believed to have emerged in 2017 as a trolling campaign and has since been used by white supremacists, BBC reported.

According to the poll, 53% of black respondents agreed with the statement, but 26% disagreed and others were not sure.

Adams said that those that disagreed were a “hate group”.

“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… because there is no fixing this,” he was quoted as saying by BBC.

Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Darrin Bell reacted to the incident and tweeted: “If you’ve been called ‘racist’ all your life, it’s probably because you’ve been a lifelong racist.”

What is Dilbert?:

Dilbert is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Scott Adams, first published on April 16, 1989.

It is known for its satirical office humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office with engineer Dilbert as the title character. 

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