Leah Barkoukis |  February 23, 2023 11:30 AM – Townhall.com

Woke racial politics has taken over nearly every institution. From education to government to business, all seem to be bowing to the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion gods. But is that in line with what most Americans think? Rasmussen Reports sought to find out, asking respondents in a recent survey conducted Feb. 13-15 about some controversial racial issues. Namely, is it even OK to be white in America in 2023? The question posed to respondents was based on the statement, “It’s OK to be white,” which was first advanced on far-right sites but later picked up on by commentators and then listed as a “hate slogan” by the Anti-Defamation League.

While some on the right are interpreting the results as being a “blow” to the liberal narrative that only white people are racists and that white people should be ashamed, not everyone is seeing the results that way. 

First, here’s what the survey found. 

When presented with the statement, “It’s OK to be white,” 72 percent of respondents agreed, as did a majority – 53 percent – of black people. Seventy-nine percent of American adults also agreed with the statement, “Black people can be racist, too.” This includes 53 percent who “Strongly Agree.” Just 12 percent disagreed, while 10 percent were not sure. 

“Support for ‘OK to be white’ crosses political lines. Majorities of Democrats (51%), Republicans (73%), and those not affiliated with either major party (52%) strongly agree that ‘It’s OK to be white,'” Rasmussen said in its analysis. “Fewer Democrats (39%) than Republicans (67%) or the unaffiliated (53%) strongly agree that ‘Black people can be racist, too.’ Still, even among Democrats, only 19% disagree with that statement.”

Broken down further, the results showed: 

BLACK AMERICANS ONLY:
“It’s okay to be white.”
53% agree, 26% disagree, 21% not sure

“Black people can be racist, too”
76% of agree, 27% disagree, 8% not sure. https://t.co/5pYBvT00qn— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) February 22, 2023

% who STRONGLY DISAGREE that “it’s okay to be white.”

All – 6%
Men – 6%
Women – 6%
18-39 – 7%
40-64 – 4%
65+ – 7%
White – 2%
Black – 18%
Hisp/oth – 10%
Dem – 8%
Rep – 3%
Ind – 6% https://t.co/5pYBvT00qn— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) February 22, 2023

While a majority of black Americans think “it’s OK to be white,” the percentage of those who don’t agree or are not sure is jarring, with some, like Dilbert creator Scott Adams, forming some grim opinions based on those figures. 

Scott Adams, and Who Disapproves of Whom

Jeff Davidson |  Mar 11, 2023 – Townhall.com

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert and the newest high-profile target of the Left, has been doubling down in the last couple weeks on an observation he made following a Rasmussen Reports survey.

In response to the question, “Do you agree or disagree with this statement, ‘It’s OK to be white’,” the survey revealed that 26% of black respondents disagreed, and another 21% said that they were not sure. Adams likened such responders to a massive hate group and suggested that white people “get the hell away from Black people.” A bit harsh, but let’s reverse the tables. 

Suppose a prominent, liberal black writer or political pundit saw a national survey, which revealed that 47% of whites felt it was not okay to be black or was unsure if it was okay to be black. Suppose this pundit suggested staying away from white people and that such responders represented a massive hate group. Would anybody cancel this pundit’s columns? Not likely.

Major media outlets everywhere immediately dropped the Dilbert column. Adams, a multi-millionaire many times over, reports that he’s already lost 80% of his weekly income.

Missing the Mark

Adams might be surprised to learn that the 47% of black respondents, if indeed they are representative of all blacks, does not represent the largest ‘hate’ group in the U.S. It is whites who disapprove of themselves in larger numbers, by raw population. Extrapolation has its risks, still, 47% of the country’s 47.2 million blacks equals 22.2 million people and 20% of the country’s 204.3 million whites equals 40.9 million people (all figures rounded).

Tens of millions of white people have been brainwashed to believe that their ethnicity and skin color is detrimental to our nation. To them, by simply being born, they become a menacing cultural blight. When late night talk show host Jimmy Fallon announced to his studio audience that the white population of the U.S. had declined 8.6% in the last decade, they responded with raucous laughter and clapping. 

He seemed shocked but sought to mask it. “Interesting reaction to that,” he quipped. Granted, Fallon has sucked up to “progressives” for many years, but the situation is more bizarre than interesting. 

These self-appointed protectors of the realm seek to politically and financially quash any person, place, or thing which they regard as offensive to others. Why? They are “virtuous” caretakers of “social justice” “inclusion” and “equity.” Concurrently, many minority individuals are flummoxed by what whites enjoy canceling, merely because the white majority perceives it to be offensive to particular minorities.

Suddenly, Unworthy

Do you dislike The Cat in the Hat? Michelle Obama invited The Cat in the Hat characters to the White House on January 21, 2015, to read to young children as part of her “Let’s Move, Let’s Read!” initiative. She exclaimed, “Pretty much all the stuff you need to know is in Dr. Seuss.”

Did anyone in attendance, anyone at all — Mrs. Obama included – regard these invited actors as portraying racial stereotypes? Was a single person offended or outraged? Photographs and newspaper accounts of that event revealed that the opposite was true.

So, please explain: when did The Cat in the Hat, other Dr. Seuss books, and his array of characters become “racist”? Not a single sentence or character changed in any of his books. Self-loathing liberals who despise anything which they suspect somehow disparage minorities, however, have been able to drum up massive press coverage of the now offensive Dr. Seuss books.

These self-loathing liberals, nonetheless, feel morally superior to everybody else. As such, they display an odd psychosocial characteristic which social scientists will be examining for decades to come: How individuals, programmed en masse to loathe themselves, despoil every facet of our western culture which they don’t meet their highly subjective standards.

All So Strange

These contorted standards become entrenched as part of a liberal, Leftist, unquestionable doctrine and then spread over the Internet like kudzu. And who among this throng of millions dares to question pervasive woke doctrine?

As they proceed with their many forms of boycotts and doxxing, such as the public ostracism of Scott Adams, and deepen their embrace of cancel culture, it’s difficult to forecast when, if ever, the dam will break. Self-loathing whites constantly glean positive strokes and virtue signals with one another.

They are notably giddy to be accepted in the club of the morally superior and are fanatic about their “righteous mission. Each one of them sense to the marrow in their bones that they are on the “right side” of history. Sadly, they are on the maniacal side of cultural and social suicide.

Tauhid Bondia wants to put the joy back in comics with ‘Crabgrass’

Tauhid Bondia is one of the handful of Black cartoonists in syndication. His “Crabgrass” comic strip is now in over 125 newspapers, including The Plain Dealer, and he wants to push the figure upward. “Crabgrass” is set in the 1980s. First published June 27, 2022, the strip builds its narrative around two boys in a small town and their interracial friendship: Miles is Black; Kevin, white. (Courtesy Andrews McMeel Syndication)

By Justice B. Hill, cleveland.com – Published: Apr. 14, 2023, 2:18 p.m. – Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Tauhid Bondia can tell stories that go beyond the ones he tells as a cartoonist. Sure, his followers might prefer to hear him talk about “Crabgrass,” his popular syndicated comic strip, but they would miss the rest of his story.

The rest of his story is deep. It has little to do with the openings Bondia found for his strip after newspapers dropped “Dilbert” because of the alleged racist comments Scott Adams, its illustrator, made in February. The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com replaced “Dilbert” with “Crabgrass” in March.

Adams’s toxic words sucked the joy out of “Dilbert.”

“I do think it’s a big part of a cartoonist’s job to spread as much joy as they can,” Bondia said. “Scott Adams actually did just that for a number of years.”

What Adams said hurt people.

Bondia, 46, understood the depth of the hurt, but he wasn’t unsympathetic to Adams.

“I sincerely hope that he can get back on task soon,” he said.

Yet he can ill afford to waste time on Adams. Bondia, one of the handful of Black cartoonists in syndication, has his own task ahead. His strip is now in over 125 newspapers, including The Plain Dealer, and he wants to push the figure upward.

He didn’t get those numbers without misses along the way.

For any cartoonist’s road to syndication is pockmarked with potholes. Sometimes, a man can use a break, and Adams might have given Bondia his.

Breaking in …

Think hard about “Garfield,” “Pearls Before Swine” and a strip like longtime mainstay “Beetle Bailey,” and then you might wonder how Bondia’s “Crabgrass” squeezed into the space “Dilbert” left vacant.

Pluck and luck must have played a role.

Ask John Vivona of Andrews McMeel Syndication about “Crabgrass,” and he’ll tell it to you like this: The strip was just enjoyable.

“I love the fact that it is a comic about friendships in a simpler time – no mobile phones or Nintendo,” said Vivona, vice president of Group and Digital Sales. “It is about friends using their imaginations, playing outdoors and just being kids.”

Bondia set “Crabgrass” in the 1980s. First published June 27, 2022, his strip builds its narrative around two boys in a small town and their interracial friendship: Miles is Black; Kevin, white.

Fictionalizing his youthful innocence, Bondia modeled Kevin loosely on a real best friend (his name, however, wasn’t Kevin). In the strip, he and Miles are growing into their own people.

The boys are forever 9 years old, though.

“If there is any life lesson I’ve woven into the strip, it’s a reverence for childhood friendship,” Bondia said.

For Miles and Kevin, Bondia uses their waggish adventures, their quirks and their brotherhood — the boys are “blood brothers” in the strip, knife and all — to create wry, compelling storylines.

To find a comparison, you might want to look at “The Adventures of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids,” a cartoon that ran Saturday mornings on television in the 1970s and early ‘80s.

“I can see what you are saying,” Vivona said. “I’ve never thought of it that way. I think the strip has a more realistic and authentic feel, while being very funny at the same time.”

Funny how funny sells, isn’t it? And if “Crabgrass” is anything, it’s funny.

Even its origin is funny. At least Bondia’s path to producing this strip is — though not necessarily in a yuck-yuck-yuck way.

His starting line

Who doesn’t enjoy an origin story?

Tauhid Bondia surely has his. It goes back to his boyhood in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.

When he was 4 years old, he slept on Spider-Man sheets. One day, Tauhid — and, remember, he’s just 4 — had an itch to illustrate the Marvel Comics superhero, so he went and found a yellow legal pad. He used a blue ballpoint pen for his sketch.

After he finished, Tauhid let his mother, a single parent, look at his artwork.

“I remember seeing, you know, the expression on my mom’s face,” he said. “She was really, really impressed and wanted to encourage me to keep drawing.”

And he did.

But he didn’t go from a boy artist to a syndicated cartoonist without some steps in between, and Tauhid had plenty of steps to take.

Upon reaching middle school, he’d learned to draw the favorite cartoon character of everyone in his class. He soon mastered drawing portraits of people — of real people … of strangers, friends and family members.

“Basically, it was like a magic trick or something that I could do well,” he said. “That’s clearly something that I had that other people didn’t have.”

His progression as an artist got a boost from an older cousin, whose own talent as an artist impressed Tauhid. They’d sit in the dining room of his mother’s home and sketch figures from comic books and magazines.

Real simple stuff, he said.

One day, his cousin saw him sketch a skateboarder from a magazine. He stopped Tauhid and told him, “Now, draw what you see. Don’t draw what you think it should be.”

Tauhid had no idea he was drawing what he imagined, despite the fact he was looking at the photograph. He was stuck in his head, seeing things that weren’t actually there.

“I still remember that if you sometimes have to draw from reference, it’s OK, even if it doesn’t quite look right,” he said.

The road to success

His first serious efforts at cartooning weren’t quite right. Bondia started and stopped several strips before he drove himself hard to make one work; he titled it “Bells and Whistles.”

In his 20s at the time, he published the strip on the internet. He described it as a fantasy world populated with dragons, wizards and elves, a la J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.”

His strip wasn’t the only one with this theme, plus the fantasy world wasn’t a place for a Black cartoonist who didn’t understand it. Bondia didn’t. He realized he didn’t need to mimic what existed; he needed a space where nobody else was.

“I struggled to find an audience,” Bondia said.

Still, he learned a lot from “Bells and Whistles,” and the most important lesson was that images and words needed to mesh. His writing mattered as much as his clever images, and the successful cartoonists balance the two sides, Bondia said.

He didn’t look at “Bells and Whistles” as an abject failure. He moved on from it. He sat behind his desk in Hodgenville, Kentucky, and played with fresh concepts. His boyhood camaraderie with his blood brother struck him as comic-strip worthy.

So around his job as a graphic designer, Bondia set his mind to sketching an idea he thought would sell.

For a couple of years, he fiddled with “Crabgrass.” When he got laid off in 2018, he committed to the strip, which he launched online in 2019.

Unemployed, Bondia relied on his wife’s job to pay their bills. It then became syndication or bust.

“I figured, ‘OK, it’s time to get into the big leagues,’ ” he said.

What’s next?

Bondia made a connection with Andrews McMeel, which found the strip lively. Vivona thought its diverse cast strengthened its appeal. The characters felt real, and the artwork, he said, was “incredible.”

In the first round of pitching the comic strip, the sales staff at Andrews McMeel landed two dozen newspapers. But that total wasn’t enough. So.\, the syndicate put its effort to publish “Crabgrass” on hold.

“That was devastating,” Bondia said. “I thought, ‘Oh, well, this is it; this is the end of my syndication story.’ “

He had spent two years in developing the comic strip, and it just wasn’t good enough, Bondia began to think. Nobody was looking for a strip like his.

But people were. The syndicate never stopped pitching “Crabgrass,” and as it continued to court newspapers, the number of interested editors grew.

“Crabgrass had a fast start and never looked back,” Vivona said.

In a couple of months, the strip had 75 newspapers onboard.

“When ‘Dilbert’ went away under the circumstances it went away, there was a demand for a strip like mine,” Bondia said. “So, yeah, we did end up picking up a lot of papers.”

Vivona said “Crabgrass” was already growing in popularity before the “Dilbert” fiasco made NPR and the podcast circuit. He saw no reason the comic strip won’t stretch beyond newspapers.

Nor did Bondia.

“It’s kind of a pipedream, but I would love for there to be a TV show,” he said. “One day on Netflix or one of those streaming services … that’s the goal.”

Comic strips like “Superman,” “The Addams Family,” “Flash Gordon,” “Blondie” and “Popeye” have made the leap from newsprint to the TV screen. Even “Dilbert” did.

They’ve all pitched products as well.

“Crabgrass” can do that too, can’t it?

“With its burgeoning number of newspapers and passionate and growing popularity, anything is possible,” Vivona said. “I think fans would love it.”

Justice B. Hill grew up and continues to live in Cleveland. He practiced journalism for more than 25 years at daily newspapers and sports websites before settling into teaching gig at Ohio University. He quit May 15, 2019, to write and globetrot. He’s been doing both.

Dilbert cartoon dropped by US newspapers over creator’s racist comments

This article is more than 1 year old

Once-popular cartoon scrapped from hundreds of papers after Scott Adams calls Black people a ‘hate group’ on his YouTube show

The comic strip Dilbert has been dropped from multiple US newspapers in response to racist comments by its creator, Scott Adams, who called Black Americans a “hate group” and urged white people to “get the hell away” from Black people in a YouTube video.

Adams’s comments on 22 February came in response to a conservative organization’s poll which appeared to show that 26% of Black respondents said they disagreed with the statement “It’s OK to be white”. Another 21% said they were not sure.

The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post each said on Saturday they were dropping Dilbert because of Adams’s comments.

Gannett, the largest American newspaper publisher, said in statement that USA Today Network – which includes more than 300 local media outlets in 43 states – would immediately cease publishing the cartoon.

“Recent discriminatory comments by the creator, Scott Adams, have influenced our decision to discontinue publishing his comic,” Gannett said in a statement. “While we respect and encourage free speech, his views do not align with our editorial or business values as an organization.”

An executive at Cleveland’s the Plain Dealer newspaper, Chris Quinn, said the decision to drop the strip was not “difficult”.

“We are not a home for those who espouse racism. We certainly do not want to provide them with financial support,” Quinn said. “Until we decide what to replace Dilbert with, you’ll likely see a gray box where it has been appearing.”

The Anti-Defamation League called the phrase “It’s OK to be White” a “hate symbol” and noted that it was popularized in 2017 as a trolling campaign by members of the notorious discussion forum 4chan.

“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,” the 65-year-old Adams said on his YouTube rant. “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 I don’t think it makes any sense as a white citizen of America to try to help Black citizens any more. It doesn’t make sense. There’s no longer a rational impulse. So I’m going to back off on being helpful to Black America because it doesn’t seem like it pays off.”

His comments were picked up on social media, igniting demands that Adams’s work be dropped by publishers who carried the comic strip.

“In light of Scott Adams’s recent statements promoting segregation, the Washington Post has ceased publication of the Dilbert comic strip,” the newspaper’s front office said on Saturday, also noting that readers had contacted the newspaper calling for the cartoon to be dropped.

A statement from the Los Angeles Times, which said it had removed four Dilbert cartoons from its pages in recent months for violations of its standards, added: “Cartoonist Scott Adams made racist comments in a YouTube livestream [on 22 February], offensive remarks that the Times rejects.”

The cartoonist has previously claimed that some of his projects have been canceled because he is white.

In 2022, he introduced the first-ever Black character to Dilbert, dubbed Dave the Black Engineer, whom he used to mock the idea of workplace diversity and transgender identity.

In June 2020, he referred to the cancellation of a Dilbert animated TV series 20 years ago as the “the third job I lost for being white”.

Thirteen months ago, in January 2022, Adams tweeted that was “going to self-identify as a Black woman” until Joe Biden picked his presidential nominee to the US supreme court.

“I realize it’s a long shot, but I don’t want to completely take myself out of the conversation for the job,” Adams said in that tweet.

Dilbert syndicator Andrews McMeel has called the strip “the most photocopied, pinned-up, downloaded, faxed and emailed comic strip in the world”.

According to McMeel’s bio on the cartoonist, Adams grew up a fan of the Peanuts comics and started drawing his own comics at the age of six. It said more than 40 Dilbert reprint books have been published.

The Dilbert Principle, published in 1997, looked at corporate America “in all its glorious lunacy”, according to Amazon, and became a New York Times bestseller.

Adams confirmed that his once popular cartoon was being dropped, and he said he expected that to happen.

“By Monday, I should be mostly canceled. So most of my income will be gone by next week,” he said. “My reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed. You can’t come back from this.”

• Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting