Scott Adams: a lesson in how not to be heard.
The controversy following the Dilbert creator's incendiary comments is a barometer for how we're not hearing each other. But can it help us get back on track? My thoughts...
On the February 22nd episode of his show Real Coffee With Scott Adams, Adams — creator of the widely syndicated American newspaper comic strip Dilbert — made the following comments (which you can watch above — the monologue in question starts at the 13:22 mark if the video doesn’t automatically cue to that spot):
Rasmussen [Reports] had a provocative little poll today. They said “Do you agree or disagree with the statement ‘It’s okay to be white’? That was an actual question[…]
26% of blacks said “No — it’s not okay to be white.” 21% weren’t sure. Add ‘em together, and that’s 47% of black respondents were not willing to say “It’s okay to be white.” That’s a real poll. This just happened. Did you have any idea? [Laughs.] Would you have imagined that that could have happened?
So, as you know, I’ve been identifying as black for a while — years now — because I like to be on the winning team. And I like to help. I always thought, ‘Well, if you help the black community […] that’s sort of the hardest thing [with] the biggest benefit, so I’d like to focus a lot of my life resources in helping black Americans — so much so that I started identifying as black to just be on the team I was helping. But it turns out that nearly half of that team doesn’t think I’m okay to be white[…]
I have to say, this is the first political poll that ever changed my activities[…] As of today, I’m going to re-identify as being white, because I don’t want to be a member of a hate group. I’ve accidentally joined a hate group. If nearly half of all blacks are not okay with white people — according to this poll, not according to me — that’s a hate group. And 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. Just get the fuck away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed. You just have to escape.
So that’s what I did. I went to a neighborhood [with] a very low black population. Because, unfortunately, there’s a high correlation between the density [doesn’t finish sentence] — and this is according to Don Lemon, by the way. Here, I’m just quoting Don Lemon, when he notes that when he lived in a mostly-black neighborhood, there were a bunch of problems that he didn’t see in white neighborhoods. So even Don Lemon sees a big difference in your own quality of living based on where you live and who’s there. So I think it makes no sense whatsoever as a white citizen of America to try to help black citizens anymore. It’s no longer a rational impulse.
So I’m going to back off from being helpful to Black America because it doesn’t seem like it pays off. I’ve been doing it all my life, and the only outcome is, I get called a racist. [Laughs.] It makes no sense to help black Americans if you’re white. It’s over. Don’t even think it’s worth trying. Now, we should be friendly — I’m not saying start a war or do anything bad, nothing like that — I’m just saying: get away.
And here’s my take on all of it: everybody who focuses their priority on education does well. If anybody in the black community focuses on education, they’ll [also] do well. If they don’t, I can’t make that my problem anymore. It just can’t be my problem. It can’t be my problem if the solution is so clear and so available [yet] people don’t want to take it. It’s just not my problem anymore. So I resign. I resign from the hate group called “black Americans.” According to the Rasmussen poll, 46% of them [sic] don’t think white people are okay — just being white.
The most helpful thing I can do is to say “I’m not going to help.” Do you understand that? Continuing to help in that sort of classic “Oh, let me help you, give you a lift up, give you a hand, mentor you, hire you, prefer you” — I’m going to stop all of that. I’m done with all of that. It didn’t work. The only thing that will work is to say “You’ve got to fix your own problem. You know how to do it. Everybody else figured it out. I’m not going to speculate [on] why you’re not doing it or [on] why there’s a difference. I’m just going to say: it’s available to everybody. Just pick it up. It’s free money — focus on education and you could have a good life too.” Those who don’t want to focus on education, you just need to get away from them, just get as much distance as you can. That’s my recommendation.
I’m also really sick of seeing video after video of black Americans beating up non-black citizens. I realize it’s anecdotal, and it doesn’t give me a full picture of what’s happening, but every damn day I look on social media and there’s some black person beating the shit out of some white person. I’m kind of over it.
So I quit. And it feels good not to be in a racist hate group anymore. I’m now independent — not a member of any group. I do not align with any group: not the white supremacists, and not the black racists.
Needless to say, a shitstorm of controversy ensued, with newspapers across the U.S. dropping Dilbert like a hot potato. Adams spoke at length with Hotep Jesus about why he chose to express his thoughts in such a pointed way, effectively lighting his career on fire to make a point (I highly recommend watching for some important context):
Some points of order:
Adams is a lifelong leftist who, at the very least, made some measure of personal investment in throwing his weight behind racial-justice causes.
Adams mis-interpreted the poll results: the question regarding “It’s okay to be white” was intended to tease-out people’s feelings about the phrase as a longtime slogan favored by American Nazi groups. If we were to translate the question into plain English, it would read something like Are you okay with this phrase given that it’s often employed as a dog whistle by hate groups? Adams appears to have been completely unaware of this context, and it looks like he took the question literally, as if the poll respondents were actually indicating that they didn’t think it was okay to be white, not that they were responding based on their feelings about the phrase in light of its loaded use within a contemporary backdrop of racial friction.
I should also say up-front: Adams does little to help his image. Long before placing this particular live landmine in front of his own feet on purpose, it was typical of him to display a kind of tone-deafness that’s so pointed it verges on antagonistic. Even when he was trying to be measured in the past, Adams oozed with a confidence — sometimes fair, sometimes not — in his own deductive reasoning. One can watch his videos — even the one he posted in response to the controversy — and look at him as someone who not only luxuriates in his own smugness, but who appears incapable of properly gauging how his statements are going to land with other humans:
That said, it was only a matter of time before someone came out and said what Adams said, and said it in as pointed a way as he did. I’ve long contended that when you demonize “whiteness” to the point that it’s openly derided as a kind of genetic defect, you leave people with only two choices: ass-kissing deference on the one hand and fuck-you defensiveness on the other. And the defensiveness only intensifies the more the pressure gets turned up.
Not only that, forcing people into propping-up the self-esteem of others is a downward spiral for the self-esteem of the very people the new power-remediation regime is supposed to be helping. All human beings instinctively sense when someone is telling us what we want to hear because they fear they have no choice. If I twist your arm to tell me that I’m the fairest of them all because we both know I’m going to punish you if you don’t, then how convinced could I possibly be when you say what I’ve pressured you into saying? I’m going to know in my bones that your deference is worthless, and I’m going to walk away worse-off, not better.
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Columbia University linguist John McWhorter, to name just one, has paralleled today’s “anti-racist” rhetoric to the Biblical concept of original sin. In numerous video clips, articles and books (most recently Woke Racism), McWhorter has argued that what we now refer to as “anti-racism” is in fact a new religious orthodoxy that undermines black empowerment:
Likewise, I’ve argued that when you institutionalize a view that positions European-descended people as the originators of all history’s evils — imperialism, slavery, genocide, domination, even rape and the plunder of the earth — you’re bound to engender a backlash.
Full-stop: the view that Europeans invented subjugation is just plain wrong. It’s grotesquely historically inaccurate.
What we see today when people wallow in an orgy of flagellating white people is actually an attempt at correcting for the brutality of the past. This is not an entirely mis-guided intention, but it has catastrophic consequences — not the least being that it achieves the opposite of what it’s intended to do. For one, whites don’t actually receive the message, regardless of whether they submit or push back. That’s because this viewpoint sews the seeds of more racism — in both camps.
If we blindly follow along with the lexicon of “anti-racism,” we inadvertently objectify brown-skinned people to such a degree that we re-animate the Euro-centric paradigm: at the center of the universe lies white guilt. And then, almost as an afterthought, there’s everyone else — noble savages who are inherently closer to god in their innocence, purity, and inability to engage in evil.
As Thomas Chatterton Williams once pointed out, this view posits white people as the only historical group to possess agency. I can’t think of a way of looking at the world that more closely echoes the outlook of the colonial era, and yet that’s exactly what we’re re-creating. “Anti-racism,” exposed in the light of day what it actually is, is just a colonizer’s view of the world, dusted off and given a new set of clothes.
So it behooves us to look at the irony of such a strong pushback coming from a person of Adams’ ideological makeup — an aspect that wasn’t lost on avowed "anti-racist" DEI proponent Pamela Denise Long, who penned a Newsweek editorial calling for Adams not to be cancelled.
Long writes:
[…]diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism has lost the plot if cancelation is the go-to option.
Implementing antiracism is about calling people in to a more balanced way of being, not just calling others out. It can both be the case that what Adams said is racist and be the case that he deserves the opportunity to change his mind—yes, including in the public sphere.
I hope none of us are considered irredeemable if diligent attempts at sorting race from racism fall short. Ironically, the fear of cancelation stunts growth when the costs of mucking it up far outweigh the perceived benefits of trying.
We can all do better. And quite simply, we must.
On the flipside, Long also mentions that "many conservative critics of cancel culture" have flat-out repudiated Adams' comments. One of those was The Hill co-host Robby Soave, who interviewed Long on the show Rising:
For what it’s worth, I found Long’s comments on Rising to be far less nuanced than her Newsweek column. Moreover, we could also read the reaction to the Scott Adams controversy as a measure of just how strongly American conservatives tend to align with one another:
If it’s in fact true that both black and white conservatives alike have mostly come out in support of Adams, it’s because they see what he said through the prism of fighting against societal decay (i.e: crime) by restoring family/religious values and preserving a sense of a unified American identity — not to mention a wariness of “the left” as a force they see, not without reason, as an existential threat to the survival of the America they want to live in.
See for yourself (more of my commentary below):
There’s an aspect to this controversy that gets to what I see as the heart of the issue: I’ve often wondered whether people in all groups would actually be heard if, instead of communicating in a tone that comes across as YOU are oppressing me and YOU need to pay because YOU are responsible for my suffering, what they tried to get across instead was can you take a moment and TRY to understand what it’s like to be in my shoes? I’m convinced the latter approach would lead to greater understanding a lot more of the time.
I’m also convinced that people are afraid of that understanding. It may seem counter-intuitive, but if you’re part of a group — African-Americans and women, to name just two — that has been aggressively denied its full personhood, it’s only fair to expect that, as a member of that group, you haven’t been privy to what it feels like to take your full personhood for granted.
When I walk into a room as a male of a particular ethnic makeup, I could be dressed in tattered clothes, completely unkempt, un-groomed, un-showered without a penny to my name and still pretty much bet on the overwhelming likelihood that I’m going to be taken seriously once I open my mouth — i.e: the very definition of privilege, even though I’m loathe to invoke that term.
People who’ve never felt like they can automatically fall back on being taken seriously — being viewed as full human beings — don’t actually know what it’s like to live with that kind of psychic cushion around them. As a result, they easily fall into the trap of expressing their desire for their humanity to be recognized from an unconscious place of feeling hopeless that it’s ever going to happen. Their energy emanates a sense of defeat and futility right out of the gate. And so, in order to compensate for their own lack of trust in themselves, they pile-on the sense that the other person is responsible for their plight.
I mean, look at the way the woman who opens this clip comes across:
We fear — and tend to sabotage — states of well-being that we’re unfamiliar with. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve actively strived towards leveling-up in some area of my life, only to find myself undermining my own efforts in countless other ways. As far as I see it, self-defeat is just part of the human condition at the atomic level. And people we might view as “successful” and “powerful” are hardly immune.
I can laugh about all the ways I get in my own way because, at the end of the day, I always know I’m likely to be taken seriously. Even if someone doesn’t like me, and even if they look down on me, I don’t necessarily look down on myself the way they do. At times — not every time, but enough times — I can just shrug it off. And there’s a good chance they’re at least going to show me a modicum of respect anyway, simply because that’s what I’m accustomed to being worthy of.
I’m convinced that today’s more shrill messaging on racism and sexism is unconsciously intending to push people away. It’s not meant to be heard. It’s meant, in fact, to put people off. Because when we put-off our audience, there’s a perverse kind of safety in not being seen. When being overlooked is familiar, alas, we’ll do everything we can to keep it that way, even as we may outwardly kick and scream for recognition.
Scott Adams, in an almost poetically symmetrical way, clearly spoke with the intention — conscious or not — of being misunderstood. It’s like part of him wanted to muddy up the point he was making, and to make it easier for people not to hear him on the basis that he sounded a lot like the ugliest, most brash permutation of racial hatred that exists. He knows that’s not what he represents, and yet he not only assumed that tone, but he doubled-down on it afterwards.
The Adams controversy is a great barometer of how we’re not hearing one another, but I’m also hopeful that it can function as a gauge by which we can learn how to listen better. After all, if even a handful of self-described anti-racists and conservatives are flipping the script on their usual talking points, then maybe that’s an indicator that this controversy cracked through our rhetorical rigor mortis and moved the needle in the right direction.
One can only hope...
<3 SRK
"People who’ve never felt like they can automatically fall back on being taken seriously — being viewed as full human beings — don’t actually know what it’s like to live with that kind of psychic cushion around them."
spot on.