Cancelling a cartoonist because he was shocked nearly half of 'black' people polled had racist views of 'white' people and decided he would stop supporting 'black' causes is not exactly earth shattering if you live in the bay area.
Racialization of everything has caused tremendous polarization, which combined with an epic level of drug fueled crime (some of it very violent) has made people of all types very paranoid. Very unhealthy and fueled to a large extent by well meaning 'compassionate' suburbanites who have no clue what is going on out there except via their boob tube.
That’s not what happened: “it’s okay to be white” is a well-known white supremacist campaign which started on 4chan. Here’s a history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_okay_to_be_white
It’s designed to sound plausibly benign to people who aren’t paying attention — for example, anyone who didn’t stop to ask why someone felt the need to answer a question nobody was asking – but black people in the US are unsurprisingly not given the opportunity to be oblivious to racism. Ask a black person or a Jewish person what the neo-nazis are doing and they’re far more likely to be at least somewhat informed because a lot of people in their communities can’t afford not to be.
The entire EXPLICITLY STATED point of these /pol/ campaigns is to manipulate the media into acting as an engine of radicalization.
“It’s okay to be white” would have died on the vine right next to “Islam is right about women” if the media didn’t go into an amplification feeding frenzy.
Edit: and sure, the cat’s out of the bag and actual racists are probably using the phrase now. But clearly no lesson has been learned - ditching Scott Adams for supposedly making reprehensible racist remarks is going to absolutely set more than a few people down the path of radicalization when they look up what he said and see “it’s okay to be white”. I can only imagine the glee over on 4chan right now.
Why are people trying to make this guy sound clever and self aware? He sounds unhinged
For example: It was common for alt-right speakers to find and doxx trans people at universities they would be invited to. Of course, allies would try to protest these speakers coming to universities because they would doxx trans people at them. But trying to keep them off campus plays right into the "we're being oppressed, academia is a leftist hivemind hellscape" narrative that the very same doxxers try to spin. So the only option is to let them come on and doxx trans people? I don't really know. It's nasty.
They've been doing it the entire time. There was no amplification feeding frenzy, but the racists have been patently forcing hte meme for something like 18 months with stickering, banner drops, coordinated shitposts etc.
going to absolutely set more than a few people down the path of radicalization
Who, the ultra-late adopters? Dilbert went on an anti-woke trajectory a few years ago.
But that's not all he said at all...
He said:
"Black America is a hate group"
"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."
"So that's what'd I did. I went to a neighborhood with a very low black population."
"I don’t think it makes any sense as a white citizen of America to try to help Black citizens anymore"
...pretending all he said was "It's ok to be white" is completely disingenuous.
Going on about how even asking the question is racist is a lame criticism. A bunch of white supremacists touched a nerve and revealed a bunch of anti-white racism in the population. It is how it is. The only way to fight against their propaganda is not to defame the people saying this - it’s to not be racist and to point out that mildly racist views on white people don’t nessecarily amount to much of anything in the real world.
For example, if you asked me whether it was important to secure a future for white children, I’d react negatively even though I am white because I know that phrasing and the related belief structure is tightly bound to the white supremacist movement. That doesn’t mean I don’t want white children to have a great future - as a father that’d be abhorrent - but I want that for all children and I specifically don’t want anything I say or do to be construed as supporting the kind of people who rally around the 14 words.
As to the “14 words” somehow I feel those are more loaded because it’s a pretty explicit historical reference to WWII German wartime expansionism which genuinely killed loads of people, which makes the word “secure” in the 14 words feel very uncomfortable. We know exactly what “secure” means and it caused much death.
That's only true if you're painfully context-blind, or if you live in a non-white-dominated society that's well known for centuries of discrimination towards whites (which you don't).
I am white and while the phrase taken at its face value is obviously true, I can't think of a context where I could use it without intentional racist subtexts - and that's without even considering the origin of the phrase.
What I have seen is people who aren’t privileged and aren’t successful will hate themselves because they believe they are privileged and because they’re not successful that makes them bad even relative to other similarly unsuccessful people. Poor white boys in Britain have the worst educational outcomes in the country. I’ve heard countless times how affirmative action isn’t a problem because of legacy admissions mostly being held by whites, and it never dawns on people that this means the non-legacy spots for white students must’ve reduced if one is to maintain racial equity (which must of course be done because of centuries of privilege), resulting in a unique problem for people at the intersection of being poor and white which doesn’t happen to poor people in general. Same things happen in the workforce, if you try to achieve equity in a disproportionately white workplace without firing a bunch of white people, think about it, WHICH white people take the hit? Despite what I describe not showing that while people collectively are hard done by, my point is that looking at the collective situation is misleading and underestimates the potential for a white person to get screwed for having the wrong skin BECAUSE of the privilege of other whites!
There is one context in which I will say words to the effect of “it’s okay to be white” which is to counteract the toxic effects of treating whites as a homogenous whole with “white privilege” which can destroy peoples self esteem when they don’t live up to that privilege and think dark things about themselves and people who look like them.
> "It's okay to be white" (IOTBW) is a slogan which originated as part of an organized alt-right trolling campaign on the website 4chan's discussion board /pol/ in 2017.
Countless search results pre-date this and not on 4chan. [0]
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22it%27s+ok+to+be+white%22&...
The other thing to remember is that there's a difference between whether anyone in human history has ever combined 5 words together before and the organized campaign promoting that as a catch-phrase aiming to boost white supremacy. If we find a few neo-Nazis using that phrase before 2017, it doesn't meaningfully change the idea that the reason almost everyone else has heard of it is due to the /pol/ campaign — to call that into question you'd want to see if there was non-racist use prior to that date.
Here's considerably more detail about how they moved that from 4chan to Fox News: https://mediamanipulation.org/case-studies/viral-slogan-its-...
If the phrase were changed to something else like "White people deserve equal rights" you'll likely see different results in the poll.
Or you could read the article which quotes a couple of things.
He reacts to this with a resolution to cease his allegedly long campaign of "helping black people". As a result of the poll, he'll also cease to identify as black (which he says he has because he thought it's fitting to identify as the group he's helped for so long), considering black people a "hate group" if nearly half of them do not believe it's okay to be white. He also recommends that, if you're white, you should try to "get the hell away" from black people, citing the example of his moving to a predominantly white neighborhood. He says "there's no fixing this", suggesting helping black people is a lost cause.
He defines "help" as "give you a hand; mentor you; hire you; prefer you", saying he'll "stop all of that" and that it won't work. He concludes the only thing that works is "fixing your own problem", like "everyone else" has, refusing to speculate why there's a difference in the extent to which various groups have done so.
He ends with mentioning seeing a "black person beating the shit out of some white person" on social media "every damn day" and that he's "over it", refusing to align with "any group", whether "white supremacists" or "black racists".
At https://youtu.be/fYXkMieE0CA?t=1186, he says that what he did was "the opposite of racism -- but also racism . . . the opposite of racism is racism".
"If nearly half of all blacks are not okay with white people -- according to this poll, not according to me, according to this poll -- that's a hate group. That's a hate group, and I don't want to have anything to do with them. And I would say, you know 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, right? This can't be fixed. You just have to escape. So that's what I did: I went to a neighborhood where, you know, I have a very low black population. Because, unfortunately, you know, there's a high correlation between the density -- and this is according to Don Lemon, by the way, and so 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 they didn't see in white neighborhoods. So even Don Lemon sees a big difference in your own quality of living based on where he lived 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 doesn't make sense. It's no longer a rational impulse.
"And I'm gonna, I'm gonna back off from being helpful to black America -- because it doesn't seem like it pays off. Like, I've been doing it all my life, and have been -- the only outcome is I've been, I get called a racist. That's the only outcome. It makes no sense to help black Americans if you're white. It's over. Don't don't even think it's worth trying. Totally not trying. And. There we go. You didn't expect that today, did you?
[beep]
"But 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, and I'm also really sick of seeing video after video of black Americans beating up non-black citizens. I'm -- you know, I realize this is anecdotal, you know, and 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 this shit out of some white person. I'm kind of over it. I'm over it, right? So, I quit."
* "the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people"
* "This can't be fixed."
* "it makes no sense whatsoever as a white citizen of America to try to help black citizens anymore."
* "you just need to get away from them. Just get as much distance as you can."
You, in this thread, keep just quoting and not explaining anything, which does not exactly help your case.
The poll doesn’t prove anything, especially that black people as a race are a hate group. The idea an entire race should be considered a “hate group” is absurd on its face. So one should approach results indicating as such with a big question mark, because they are surprising. That the phrase in question is a white supremacist dog whistle fully explains the results actually.
But to take this poll credulously and throw your hands up in the air as Scott does says a lot. He doesn’t stop there though, he runs with it. With a full throat he declares an end to the idea of our integrated multicultural society. He implores white people to purposefully segregate and insulate themselves from black prior as an act of safety.
I think it’s been pointed out a couple times in this thread how polls can be deceptive. That Scott doesn’t even really grapple with this possibility and instead dives straight to “white flight” mode… well, for his sake I just hope he can get over this phase.
If Adams has been putting on a fake alt-right persona this whole time, I would encourage him to stop the act, otherwise people might start confusing him for a raging racist.
Until then, I’ll believe Adams is who he says he is.
First that’s a hell of a thing to say based on a poll result.
Second it doesn’t really follow when the point of integration wasn’t that every racial group unanimously had warm cuddly views of another, the biggest reason it happened is that segregation was causing things like unequal treatment of black people and self-esteem issues in black children. What he advises is something we know has racist outcomes in practice, and it’s also directly racist to literally just avoid or associate with people because of skin colour.
Also, one could easily imagine that he further uses the poll results to withdraw from the societal obligation to show preferential treatment to some people, which he has grown tired of, since it mainly resulted in him being called a racist anyway.
If he was actually an “unhinged racist”, I doubt that he would sound like the person in the video. What he does sound like, to my non-American ears at least, is someone who’s been trying to do good for most of his life, and gotten nothing but complaints and accusations of racism for it, and is tired of the whole thing and wants to wash his hands of it. Of course, trying to advocate for separatism is a tricky proposition, since it has horrible historical precedents. But he does not mention these, so I could easily believe that he simply did not think of that particular parallel, and is just advising people to steer clear of the whole issue, albeit in an ill-advised way.
It is way too easy to write people off as “unhinged racists” when you can easily interpret their actions otherwise. As the HN guidelines say, “Assume good faith.”
I’m sure there’s some internet law that says when you pretend to be something enough, you become that thing. Don't stare into the abyss and all that. If Scott is pretending to be an alt-right white nationalist sympathizer to make points about the integrity of polling, he’s doing a great job. He’s doing so well, he’s got even the white nationalists thinking he’s one of them.
Maybe today would be a good time for Adams to clarify. Or maybe he’ll let us go on believing what he said on his podcast is representative of his beliefs. What he does now will tell us whether or not what he did on his podcast was genuinely what he believes.
teddyh says: >"OK, now explain how this is “unhinged racism”<
Is 47% not "unhinged racism"? What about 44% as referred to in the movie "Ship of Fools", set in 1933 pre-WWII on a German passenger boat. Lowenthal is a Jew and Glocken a dwarf - groups later purged by the Nazis:
Glocken: Fifty percent of the people who produced a Goethe, a Beethoven, and a Bach voted for Rieber's [Nazi] party last week!
Lowenthal: [grumbles disagreed] Forty-four percent.
Glocken: Lowenthal, you are blind; you're absolutely blind! You can't see what's going on in front of your own face.
Lowenthal: What do you mean? Ah, you mean this business about the Jews? You don't understand us. The German-Jew is something special. We are Germans first and Jews second. We have done so much for Germany; Germany has done so much for us. A little patience, a little good will; it works itself out. [scoffs endearingly] Huh, listen, there are nearly a million Jews in Germany. What are they going to do? Kill all of us?
See the whole context at the "quotes" section at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059712/quotes/?ref_=tt_trv_qu\...
Certainly didn’t sound like anything I’d associate with the alt-right, just the standard boomercon “the Dems are the real racists amirite” useless reactionary claptrap.
People like Adams and Peterson need to stay in their narrow lanes of expertise and stop beclowning themselves. Stating “47% of blacks have issues with the phrase ‘it’s okay to be white’” isn’t racist, just unbearably stupid if you don’t follow up with an answer to “why is that?”
Which, of course, he didn’t. And canceling him for “racism” over that seems very unwise unless you want to further radicalize the poor sods that listen to him.
Edit: if replies downthread are accurate, he does go quite a bit further into the realm of actual racism. Essentially a sanitized rewording of “around blacks, never relax”.
I don't see the "spewing racism" you speak of, I just see some extrapolation to social situations that make sense. FWIW as Adams says even black people try to live in neighborhoods where there are few black people b/c crime is lower in those neighborhoods. Adams remains edgy but he's generally still on point.
- The Rasmussen poll result he discusses (only ~53% of blacks agree ‘It’s OK to be white’) were remarkable: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/i...
- Adams lays out the obvious: "Focus on education and you could have a good life too."
- Adams hits the nail on the head with the statement that "Biden just made it illegal for the(sic) AI to tell the truth". [To be legal] We have to train it to lie..."
Strange but still funny quotes: "I'm now independent, not a member of any group[black, white, or other]."