Bye, bye Dilbert

Link maybe paywalled. I will post some from my Apple News feed

The rest of it, spoilered for length

spoilertext

I’m sure he’ll cry cancel culture and how straight white males have it oh so tough these days.

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My only exposure to Scott Adams was through Dilbert so his personal views come as a shock given there is no hint of them in Dilbert. I figured he was an anti-corporate guy from the comic strip content and would have liberal leanings.

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I was aware in 2015-2016 that he was taking flak for speaking complementarily of Trump, but I had parsed his writings at that time as acknowledging Trump’s skill at shameless self-promotion, and thus the criticism of Adams at the time seemed naïve to me.

I wasn’t aware that there was more to “it” than that.

I don’t think it was necessarily wrong of him to point out the Rasmussen poll in the non-spoilered quote, (although I do wonder about Rasmussen at times, not in a good way). But if “get the hell away” is an accurate representation of his conclusion from that poll, I’d certainly empathize with newspapers wanting to sever ties with him.

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Turns out he was siding with the pointy haired boss all along.

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I’m curious if he was radicalized by the internet. Though not curious enough to find out.

My FiL, who is an open minded technocratic liberal gets on some weird Republicanish rants that seem to come from too much time on Twitter. It’s not that his thoughts are all that bad (unlike Scott Adams), but they are clueless and his need to talk about it seems neurotic.

I agree with this “It is scary that a large amount of race A disagrees with ‘It is OK to be race B’”. I disagree with what to do about it. Now what that poll asked, vs what the respondents meant is something that bears investigation. I do find it hard to get worked up about businesses choosing to dissociate from someone who is controversial, or even requires nuance to understand. Most people find nuance hard.

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If it’s “not okay to be white”, what should I do? Disguise myself using blackface? Moreover, given that I’m doing something “not okay”, what are others justified in doing to me in retaliation?

You make a good point, though, “white” may be shorthand for some negative stereotype I can easily avoid.

One way I could read the question is “is it ok to try to pass as a racial group that has more advantages in society” it seems rather ridiculous to view it as “is it ok that other people who aren’t your race exist”, which would be the scariest of all. It seems like a bad way to ask if a racial group is considered favorably in one’s view, which to me is borderline racist in its premise. I am not sure i understand what the survey is trying to figure out, but still too lazy to research it.

I wonder how many white people would say it’s okay to be Black? Was that in the poll?

Unsure of that the question is supposed to be measuring tho.

This link has a little more info, not enough to really explain the question or why people answered as they did: ‘It’s OK to be white,’ agree 72%, including 53% of black people | Washington Examiner

This link, to the creator of the survey, might have more info, but at a minimum it requires registration and perhaps cost. I didn’t register so didn’t read

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Wait … there’s a “woke narrative that white people have a monopoly on racism”?

That’s sounds a lot more like something an “anti-woke” person would claim the “woke” position is.

I have heard people sincerely argue that “by definition” (or some such) black people were not racists.

And, well…
image

loosely speaking based on how it was explained to me - such people build on the premise that racism is only within the capacity of those with historical power imbued by their race. thus whites, not blacks, can be racist. (*this may be too simple of an explanaition of the why. it is not my theory - i feel it changes the core definition of the word that most had agreed on.)

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True, individuals believe that. But is there a “woke narative” toward that end? The Washington Examiner article says over and over again that the “media” wants people to believe this narative. I’m not seeing that.

I would bet that a large majority of people seeing that receipt would say it is racist - including the large majority of “woke” people.

I’ve heard that as well.

I get that for racism to be the vile, disgusting thing it is, it is power imbalance that gives racism that extra twist of the knife.

Unfortunately, folks who argue that seem to focus on society-wide power imbalances, without recognizing that different power imbalances can exist in other situations.

I grew up in an inner city environment. I’m also fair skinned (although I’m really a mutt, and a lot of the family traditions/culture I was raised with were indigenous).

The Catholic school I went to for 3rd and 4th grade handled the problem of students being above or below grade level by having us change classes for reading and math.

For my reading class in 4th grade, there were four of us with fair skin. The teacher did not like us – I remember failing “stinky armpit” checks, her lying about us not handing in homework, and that one time where she looked at my report card, said “that can’t be right” and changed a “C” to a “D-” for her class.

Principal and parents wouldn’t believe us when we complained.

Looking back on the experience as an adult, I know that given her age, and where we lived, she probably went through hell when younger. I also am very aware that bigotry is a nasty poison, one that can seep into your bones if it permeates your environment, especially in your formative years.

But damn, it really sucked to be on the receiving end of what was probably her rage, and to not be able to do anything about it.

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This is my take as well. It’s conservative trolling, or sea-lioning or whatever the appropriate term is for a manufactured controversy

So, here is the survey.

Rasmussen
It isn’t clear what kind of answers could be given. I also have a problem with the wording “people” instead of “person”. I don’t think it is fair to ascribe to a group of people something that is an individual characteristic.
I would be a terrible respondent. “What do you mean by ‘OK’”? And “is 2 a question about what it means to be ‘racist’”, along the line of MS’s and tf’s discussion.

I used to know some of the top academic experts on polling. Their professional opinion seemed to be that most polls done on controversial topics were crap and could be dramatically swayed by the way questions were phrased, the answer choices given, and what other questions were asked. E.g., they could get % of Americans who believe in creationism to range from 30% to 60% based on answer choice options. This survey looks like it falls into that category.

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Aside: Is this issue, “it’s OK to be white”, what led the OK finger symbol to be co-opted by white supremacists?