Explainers Explained: The ‘It’s Okay to be White’ slogan used by ‘Dilbert’ creator Scott Adams and its links to White supremacy A racist rant on YouTube cost Scott Adams his job. Hundreds of US publications have dropped the ‘Dilbert’ comic strip after the cartoonist justified, ‘It’s Okay to be White’. What’s this controversial slogan all about? FP Explainers February 28, 2023 12:36:34 IST Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert, experienced possibly the biggest repercussion of his recent comments about race when distributor Andrews McMeel Universal announced Sunday, it would no longer work with the cartoonist. In an episode of his YouTube show last week, Adams described people who are Black as members of a 'hate group' from which White people should 'get away'. AP It’s satirical office humour that brought some cheer to readers amid all the gloom and doom that come with newspapers today. But now the famous “Dilbert” comic strip has no space in media in the United States. Hundreds of publications have dropped the comic after racist comments by creator Scott Adams’ left the world horrified. The controversy erupted after Adams in a rant on YouTube called Black Americans a “hate group” and suggested that White people should get the “hell away from them”. His remarks were a response to a poll from the conservative firm Rasmussen Reports that said 53 per cent of Black Americans agreed with the statement, “It’s OK to be White”. “If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with White people – according to this poll, not according to me, according to this poll – that’s a hate group,” the cartoonist said on his YouTube show “Real Coffee with Scott Adams”. “I don’t want to have anything to do with them,” Adams added, according to a report in CNN . “…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 f**k away … because there is no fixing this. ” What’s the ‘It’s Okay to be White” slogan that Adams propagated? And why is it problematic? The origins of the ‘It’s Okay to be White’ slogan ‘It’s Okay to be White’ is a slogan used by White supremacists , who believe White people are a superior race and have the right to dominate society. The phrase emerged in 2017 on the infamous message board 4chan as a trolling campaign. The original idea behind the campaign was to choose an ostensibly innocuous and inoffensive slogan, put that slogan on fliers bereft of any other words or imagery, then place the fliers in public locations. Originators assumed that “liberals” would react negatively to such fliers and condemn them or take them down, thus “proving” that liberals did not even think it was “okay” to be White, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish non-profit based in the US that works against hate crimes. Newspapers across the US have dropped the ‘Dilbert’ comic strip after Scott Adams’ controversial comments. Reuters It is not known if the original trolls were White but soon White supremacists began promoting the campaign, often adding links to websites that promoted supremacy on fliers and combining it with language or imagery linked to this controversial school of thought. ADL says on its website that White supremacists have used the slogan in the past long before the 4chan campaign originated. It categorised the phrase as a hate slogan. Conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson from the rightwing network Fox News defended the slogan after the 4chan campaign. “The sentiment ‘it’s okay to be White’ is now a hate crime. Ok, so what’s the correct position? That it’s not okay to be White? Being White by the way is not something you can control. ” “Like any ethnicity you’re born with it which is why you shouldn’t attack people for it and yet the left does constantly in case you haven’t noticed. So who’s sowing racial division here? They ought to stop. These things never end well,” he added. Also read: Cancelling Dilbert: BLM-style reverse racism to fuel White identity politics Other instances of the slogan being used The ‘It’s Okay to be White” posters have appeared in the past in universities across the US. In 2017, flyers with the controversial message were found all over the University of California campus – on sandwich boards, underneath bridges, on garbage cans and on the campus. Similar posters were also put up at the University of Washington and the University of Regina in Canada. They were widely supported by neo-Nazi and White supremacist groups and alt-right figures including former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, according to a report in The Independent . A supporter wears an ‘It’s OK to be White’ shirt during a rally of former US president Donald Trump at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma in June 2020. AFP In September 2019, stickers with “It’s Okay to be White” printed on were pasted on lampposts and drainpipes throughout the Perth city centre in Scotland. In January 2020, they appeared around Bristol city centre, the first time in England. In November 2021, the slogans appeared near the Basingstoke College of Technology in Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK. The slogan was been used on T-shirts sold by British far-right political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos and has been tied to the “All Lives Matter” campaign, an offensive slogan created in response to the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Supporters of former US president Donald Trump have been seen sporting “It’s Ok to be White” T-shirts at his rallies. Also read: Why Kanye West can’t sell controversial ‘White Lives Matter’ T-shirts It’s ‘not harmless’ The idea that White people face discrimination equal to or greater than non-White or Black people has “been a central motivator on the right for well over a decade”, says a report in The Washington Post . “Trump’s election in 2016 was powered in no small degree by Republican primary voters concerned about the status of White Americans. This sense was heightened by the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the immigration surge that occurred in 2014,” it added. In December 2019, stickers with the slogan appeared across Perth city centre in Scotland. Image courtesy: Perth Against Racism While many have said the slogan is “harmless”, Dr Victoria Canning from the University told The Independent , in 2020, “This is only a harmless message if we choose to ignore structural inequalities. We don’t live in an era of equality. ” She said that while the White working class faces largely economic problems, non-White people experience additional problems like criminalisation and racism . “Saying that is not to say that [White people] don’t experience social harms but there are specific things that white people do not experience,” she told the publication. Writer Julian Sanchez observed in a Twitter thread, “It seems like a bunch of folks were mercifully unfamiliar with the racist troll meme “it’s OK to be white” recently dragged into the spotlight by the Dilbert Guy. It’s interesting to examine because it parallels closely some more mainstream rhetorical strategies. ” It seems like a bunch of folks were mercifully unfamiliar with the racist troll meme “it’s OK to be white” recently dragged into the spotlight by the Dilbert Guy. It’s interesting to examine because it parallels closely some more mainstream rhetorical strategies. Lemme ‘splain. — @normative@mastodon. social (@normative) February 27, 2023 “A close analogy is to "white pride": It's supposed to sound innocuously parallel to phrases like "black pride" and "gay pride" which emerged as a reaction to a social context that told people those identities are shameful. But, of course, it means something very different,” he said. “It's OK to be white” is similarly supposed to sound innocuous—OBVIOUSLY it's OK to be whatever race you are, right?— but the subtext is that whites are a put upon or oppressed class, because that's the only context in which it would be relevant to say something like that,” he explained. With inputs from agencies Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram . Updated Date: February 28, 2023 12:36:34 IST TAGS: 4chan All Lives Matter Anti Defamation League Black Lives Matters.