That's still racist, because he's seeking out information that 'proves' his racism (and using a poll of 130 respondents as proof is insane).
I feel like this thread on Scott Adams is exposing how many people on HN are just overtly racist. You can enjoy his content before he went off the rails fine, but seeing some of the takes here feels like a bunch of people are one step away from arguing that segregation should come back.
So now we’ve moved the goalposts to “most people are actually racist so it’s okay to perpetuate segregation and other remnants of racial slavery in America.”
Enlightenment is a fight against our tribal instincts. But some folks think we should return to warring tribes rather than striving for something better.
It’s funny how people with bigoted views can’t handle being canceled. Scott Adams literally predicted he would be “canceled” as he proceeded to say the things on his mind that he knew would cause controversy.
He was okay with saying things that hurt the reputation of others but he was ultimately not okay with hurting his own reputation once he self-inflicted his wound.
I think it's okay to perpetuate segregation from the racists. The non-racists white and blacks can live together. And the extreme left mob who have an axe to grind with white people can live with the neo-nazis.
A wise man once said "Can't we all just get along"
You are responding to wrong person. Parent has moved the goalpost before me.
He was a collateral damage because at the time cancelling white people was the vogue. Fortunately society moved on a little since then (and no I don't support current president (and I fucking hate to get sucked into US politics everyday like this)).
Seems reasonable. He makes a provocative statement for ppl in his audience to draw their attention and make the important point it’s not okay (we should avoid) ppl who dislike us based on skin color. And he makes the further point he agrees there is still systemic racism against black folks and it’s a big problem. And yet, as you see in response to your posting of the video, ppl still dismiss it because they’d rather hold on to the soundbite to maintain their outrage, rather than understand the guy’s position.
His take is stupid even if you give him the benefit of the doubt and believe his claim at face value. You shouldn’t avoid people that dislike you in this manner because it perpetuates the problem to eternity. It is essentially the same concept as segregation: well, we can’t ever get along so we’ll just exist in separate spaces!
We literally tried that already and it didn’t work out so well.
I hate to say this but you control your destiny when it comes to your reputation. If you want people to celebrate your life instead of celebrating your death, spend your life being nice to people lifting them up.
Scott Adams didn’t do that. We are all free to feel however we want to feel about him. Don’t worry, his feelings won’t be hurt, he’s dead.
Most non-racists don’t need to spend 30 minutes on cable news explaining themselves to save face.
Saying something publicly is an action. Depending on what you say, you can’t take it back. If you tell your wife you think her friend is hot and you want a threesome you can’t take that back.
I also think you as the commenter should think a little bit about what motivates you to defend this guy. Why does he as a dead famous comic book author need his reputation defended? Why is it so important that we don’t see him as a racist asshole? What do you get out of that? Why not just let his own mistakes speak for themselves?
> Most non-racists don’t need to spend 30 minutes on cable news explaining themselves to save face.
Most people never get interviewed on cable news at all, so that’s not a meaningful baseline. When someone is publicly accused, explaining yourself publicly is a predictable response, not evidence of guilt.
> Saying something publicly is an action. You can’t take it back.
Of course you can clarify or correct yourself—people misspeak all the time. Whether that matters depends on whether listeners are interested in understanding or just in cancelling someone they don't like.
> Why do you feel the need to defend him?
Because I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of Scott Adams over many years, and I’m confident I understand his views far better than people judging him from short, out-of-context clips.
I don’t get anything out of this except insisting that the truth matters. Even when the person involved is unpopular or dead.
Because you’re invested. You’re a Scott Adams fan.
As someone who likes the Harry Potter series, I hear you. It’s tough to see your idols fall into being dumbasses.
If you sincerely think Scott Adams had zero bias, that he’s not a bigot, that he didn’t support “stop the steal,” that’s on your conscience and your value system. I choose to believe the impulse of what he said, not the 30 minutes of damage control afterward.
I’d say nobody asked the guy his opinions on such subjects and just wanted to read his funny office comics.
But that’s what happens with celebrities like this.
> Because you’re invested. You’re a Scott Adams fan.
Sure — but I wouldn’t be if I thought he was a bigot. Having listened to hundreds of hours of him explaining his views, I’m far better informed than people judging him from short, out-of-context clips.
> It’s tough to see your idols fall into being dumbasses
I don’t treat public figures as idols. I also don’t think disagreeing with prevailing opinion automatically makes someone a “dumbass.” Sometimes it means they’re willing to take reputational hits for what they believe is right.
> If you sincerely think Scott Adams had zero bias
Nobody has zero bias. That’s an impossible standard.
> As someone who likes the Harry Potter series
For what it’s worth, I think J.K. Rowling is an example of someone who did the right thing at substantial personal and professional cost, particularly in defending women and girls. That’s not idol worship — it’s acknowledging moral courage when it’s inconvenient.
> That he didn’t support ‘stop the steal'
This is where the argument seems to shift from racism to political conformity. Disagreeing with someone’s politics isn’t the same thing as establishing that they’re a bigot.
When your politics are bigotry, it isn’t a matter of “disagreeing with them.”
When your politics are anti-democracy and pro-fascism, it isn’t a matter of “disagreeing with them.”
Politics aren’t detached from real life, they aren’t some hypothetical. They have real consequences, and they represent real values.
Now I know where you stand. You follow every conservative talking point 100%.
You are playing the “I am taking a nuanced view, you’re just a sheep following popular opinion” card while you yourself are just doing the exact same thing on the other side with no nuance at all. You and I are at worst no different from each other in our belief systems.
Scott Adams was a Trumper, therefore you support him.
JK Rowling is anti-trans, which is the right wing party line, therefore you support her.
Good talk. You know where you stand, I know where I stand.
You’re treating disagreement as evidence of moral failure, then using that to retroactively justify the label. That’s not reasoning — it’s tribal sorting. You must exist in quite a bubble, a rapidly shrinking one.
You have the causality backwards. Your moral stance is abhorrent, therefore I disagree with you and want nothing to do with you. Not the other way around.
It’s not like Scott Adams did nothing wrong and was pulled in front of an inquisitor. He said weird shit and then had to play a game of PR damage control.
If you spoke extemporaneously for an hour a day, every day, for years, and people went hunting for the most awkward or easily misinterpreted clip, I’m confident they’d find weird shit too.
If you truly believe that casual conversation will inevitably lead to any kind soul to speak a quote like that you have some serious warped morals.
It’s actually worse when you’re doing it as your job because you’re supposed to know better and be proficient at that craft. It’s not like someone hot micced him having a private conversation with his buddies, this was a man who had been interfacing with the public for decades.
I don’t see any froth around my mouth. I just think the guy sucked, and I think he was racist. Free country, I’m allowed to do that.
Give him a generous read on his opinions if that’s what you want to do. To me, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.
Modern white supremacists don’t just come out and say things directly because of how it’s obviously reprehensible, they surround themselves with plausible deniability and murky language like the kind you are citing.
Let’s not forget: Scott Adams was a cartoonist. He was not some kind of sociologist or researcher on race relations. He went out of his way to go on a podcast and speak these opinions with no first hand experience or knowledge in any way.
He lived in Pleasanton, California where less than 2% of residents are black.
He has no experience or qualifications to know a damn thing about the subject. He didn’t even live near any black people - how would he know that they hate him?
No, he just wanted to say racist shit. That’s my read. If you read it different, that’s up to you.
People are correctly pointing out that the phrase “it’s okay to be white” is used as a dogwhistle.
They are not literally saying that it’s not okay to be white. They’re saying that those who speak that phrase are projecting their racist ideology. People who say “it’s okay to be white” think that white people are under attack and that white people need to re-establish dominance. To them, equality is a threat.
Of course now we are getting into the persecution fetish. The entire premise of white people in America facing any kind of race-based setback is laughable.
American political parties have revolved around platforming persecution fetishes for decades now. Real struggles are inevitably exploited by individuals who leverage identity politics for their personal gain. This has played out in every group who currently or historically suffered some injustice, I don’t need to list them all, and now we can include whites on that list.
But it’s not up for debate that white college applicants, particularly from poor and middle-class backgrounds, were discriminated against by top universities who implemented race-based admissions policies. The numbers are public. There’s simply no question.
People of all races can have legitimate grievances and harms. Im sure some racist black people said "black is beautiful", but that isnt a reason to forbid anyone from saying it.
“It’s okay to be white” isn’t really the same as saying “black is beautiful” because of the context.
“It’s okay to be white” is spoken in the context of a majority group that has complete societal power over other minority groups, and is speaking the phrase in response to legitimate questions on the majority’s privilege over and treatment of those minorities.
It also makes a lot less logical sense for the group with the upper hand to complain. It’s distasteful: it’s like saying “It’s okay to be regional vice president! as if you are blind to the fact that you boss everyone else around.
”The white majority justice system incarcerates black people for marijuana possession at a higher rate despite a similar use rate.”
Sure, the context was a poll that asked Americans "Is it OK to be white?" with about half of the black participants saying they either disagreed or weren't sure. A bit of Scott's elaboration is near the bottom: https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/poll-finds-over-a-qu...
Not only that, Adams deceptively included the answer "I don't know" with "I disagree", and it STILL didn't add up to 50%. And it was an ideologically motivated Push Poll from Rasumssen Reports, a slanted right wing polling organization. A fair poll would never use a White Supremacist trolling slogan as a trick question with no explanation. The question doesn't even make any sense, and was asked with no context or definition of what "ok" means, so "I don't know" is the obvious correct answer.
"It's ok to be white" is a White Supremacist slogan specifically designed to troll and cause division and hatred, and Adams gleefully took that and ran with it, and lied and exaggerated to make his false racist point, just like negzero7 continue to do. What both Scott Adams and negzero7 did was PRECISELY what the White Supremacists who coined that slogan had hoped for.
>"It's okay to be white" (IOTBW) is an alt-right slogan which originated as part of an organized trolling campaign on the website 4chan's discussion board /pol/ in 2017.[1][2][3] A /pol/ user described it as a proof of concept that an otherwise innocuous message could be used maliciously to spark media backlash.[4][5] Posters and stickers stating "It's okay to be white" were placed in streets in the United States as well as on campuses in the United States, Canada, Australia,[6] and the United Kingdom.[7][5]
>The slogan has been supported by white supremacists and neo-Nazis.[2][1][8]
>In a February 2023 poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports, a polling firm often referred to by conservative media, 72% of 1,000 respondents agreed with the statement "It's okay to be White". Among the 130 black respondents, 53% agreed, while 26% disagreed, and 21% were unsure. Slate magazine suggested that some negative respondents may have been familiar with the term's links with white supremacy.[41] The Dilbert comic strip was dropped by many newspapers after author Scott Adams, reacting on his podcast to the outcome of this poll, characterised black people as a "hate group" for not agreeing with the statement and encouraged white people to "get the hell away from" them.[42]
And now negzero7 is purposefully trolling and spreading the same false divisive misinformation himself, so his racist White Supremacist motives are extremely clear and obvious.
Does that sound reasonable to you?