It's Okay to be White, All Lives Matter, Scott Adams and the Importance of Context
From the vantage point of 2023, it seems weirdly inevitable that Scott Adams, whose comic strip Dilbert ranks as one of the most popular and influential of the past fifty years, would commit career suicide in a dramatic and exceedingly public manner.
Adams has been building to that awful moment when he called black Americans a hate group and encouraged white people to get the hell away from them for years, even decades, but his unfortunate inclination for self-destruction wedded to a complete lack of self-awareness kicked into high gear with Donald Trump’s political rise.
Like Elon Musk, Adams pretends to be a former centrist who supported intellectual, classy Democratic presidents like Barack Obama before making a dramatic break from the party and its leaders out of a deeply principled revulsion towards identity politics and the innumerable, unconscionable sins of the “Woke” brigade, many of which involve making exceedingly rich, thin-skinned white men like himself nervous by being insufficiently deferential.
The meltdown that cost Adams his syndication and book deals was inspired by a poll that found a sizable percentage of black Americans did not agree with the statement “It’s okay to be white.”
Adams took the poll numbers literally and personally. He interpreted them as terrifying proof that a huge chunk of black people thought that there was something fundamentally wrong and unacceptable about being caucasian.
Like many white people of his generation, the Dilbert guy clearly has a creepily paternalistic conception of race relations. He obviously thinks that black America should be deeply grateful for all of the kindness and generosity white America has shown them.
After all, we stopped having slaves, right? Slavery worked out great for slave owners, at least in terms of business, but after a bloody Civil War the practice was discontinued.
As if that weren’t saintly enough, white people also ended legal segregation a mere century or so after the end of the Civil War. But white Americans’ Christ-like selflessness did not end there.
We even elected a black man president! How could anyone want anything more than that? But did the black community appreciate all of the wonderful things white America did for them?
Did they send Scott Adams gift baskets in appreciation for the end of slavery and official segregation? Did they smile warmly at Adams whenever they saw him and thank him for being part of a race that no longer practices slavery?
No, they did not.
In an act of ingratitude Adams found so unforgivable that he was willing to destroy his uniquely charmed life and career over it, a sizable portion of African-Americans did not agree with the statement “It’s okay to be white” when asked by a pollster.
Adams insists that people who think he’s racist just because he says that black people are a hate group and that white people should get the hell away from black people and that the problem is unfixable they’re missing essential context.
That context, in Adams’ mind at least, is that he saw a poll where black people disagreed with the phrase “It’s okay to be white” and his intensely white, intensely fragile feelings were hurt.
It’s true that context is important in understanding the Dilbert guy’s downfall but the relevant context is not what Adams thinks it is.
The context that matters here is that “It’s okay to be white” is not the harmless, seemingly incontrovertible phrase it professes to be but rather an elaborate troll designed to make it seem like people concerned with racism object to whiteness in its entirety and not anti-black racism and police brutality.
In that respect it’s very similar to the phrase “All Lives Matter.” Taken literally, All Lives Matter is hard to disagree with. The lives of all races have value and meaning but the specific phrase “All Lives Matter” has a very specific, very racist context.
All Lives Matter isn’t about recognizing the value of humanity. It’s a deliberate fuck you to Black Lives Matter designed to negate the movement’s very worthwhile goals.
Obviously, the lives of people of all races have dignity and meaning. But I would not tell a pollster that I agree with the statement “White Lives Matter” because that is some racist horseshit that I do not agree with. I similarly would not agree with the statement “It’s okay to be white” because it’s a racist dog whistle for trolls and nothing more.
Adams claims that no one actually disagrees with him but he is of course playing a stupid linguistic game where he pretends that the negative, racist cultural meaning of “It’s okay to be white” and, by extension, “All Lives Matter” don’t exist, only the literal ones.
Of course, Adams also tweeted “If Biden is elected, there's a good chance you will be dead within the year.” He was engaging in tiresome hyperbole but he also desperately wants to be the victim even if he has to burn down everything he’s built for the privilege of being able to whine to the whole world that he has been cancelled.
AND SO UNJUSTLY! WHY IT DOESN’T MAKE A LICK OF SENSE AT ALL, DOES IT?!?
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