Dilbert Comic Pulled from Washington Post and Other Newspapers After Cartoonist's Racist Rant

Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty

Cartoonist Scott Adams' comic Dilbert has been pulled from newspapers all over the country following his comments regarding Black Americans.

On Saturday, The Washington Post — along with USA Today's chain of papers, the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and more outlets across the nation — reported that they will no longer be printing the long-running comic strip after Adams made racist remarks about the results of a Rasmussen poll.

The poll found that 53% of Black Americans agreed with the statement, "It's okay to be White," while 26% disagreed and 21% specified they weren't sure.

Adams, 65, commented on these statistics during a live stream of his YouTube show.

"If nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with White people…that's a hate group," he said. "I don't want to have anything to do with them. And 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."

"I'm also really sick of seeing video after video of Black Americans beating up non-Black citizens," Adams added, adding that he blames Black people for not "focusing on education."

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Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty

On Thursday, the Washington Post received complaints from readers who demanded the strip be pulled. A spokesperson for the outlet said on Saturday, "In light of Scott Adams's recent statements promoting segregation, the Washington Post has ceased publication of the Dilbert comic strip."

However, they added that it was too late to pull the strip from its upcoming print issues, one of them being Sunday's edition.

According to the outlet, Adams told the Post in a text message regarding the cancellation of his comic strip, "Lots of people are angry, but I haven't seen any disagreement yet, at least not from anyone who saw the context. Some questioned the poll data. That's fair."

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Darrin Bell, the first Black artist to win the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning and creator of comic strip "Candorville" and "Rudy Park," told the Post on Saturday, "Scott Adams is a disgrace. His racism is not even unique among cartoonists."

Bell then said Adams's attitudes aligned with those of the Jim Crow era and more recent examples of White supremacy, including "millions of angry people trying to redefine the word 'racism' itself."

During his YouTube show Saturday, Adams did just that by attempting to redefine racism as any political activity and that his words were taken out of context.

"Any tax code change is racist," he said, condemning racism and racist laws against "individuals." However, he added, "You should absolutely be racist whenever it's to your advantage. Every one of you should be open to making a racist personal career decision."

Adams also recognized that his comments would negatively impact his career, saying in the show, "Most of my income will be gone by next week. My reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed. You can't come back from this, am I right? There's no way you can come back from this."

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"Dilbert" followed the titular character in a dystopian office being tortured by their boss and a talking dog. At the height of its popularity, the strip was printed in more than 2,000 newspapers, earning Adams the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award in 1998.

A "Dilbert" television show also began airing on UPN in 1999 until it was cancelled a year later. In June 2020, Adams said the series "was the third job I lost for being White."

According to the Post, other controversial statements Adams made before the cancellation of his comic included a tweet in January 2022 saying that he planned to "self-identify as a Black woman." He also said Americans were being brainwashed to support Ukraine and praised anti-vaxxers last month.

In May 2022, Adams added a new character named Dave the Black Engineer in "Dilbert" to mock workplace diversity and transgender politics, the Post reported.

The strip had been pulled last year from Lee Enterprises's 77 newspapers, but that was for a executive reason bigger than cancelling the comic itself.