He drew Dilbert for decades. He had a lot of comics and books in him.
In his later life he was clearly trolling and dabbling in stirring up social media for fun, and it was hard to tell where the lines between that and his personal identity were.
Not that your exactly guilty, but that comes close to the cringeworthy attitude of "haha, what a great troll! Those poor fools can't tell when he's being serious, so brilliant! Wait, wait, you touched my sacred cow? Well, now you're obviously toxic and I've discovered empathy."
It’s not even logical advice if you believe him that there really is a climate of hatred against white people.
The logical advice to respond to that climate would be to act with dignity and treat other people like you’d like to be treated. To reach out and integrate, and build community. Doing that eventually solves the problem, even if it takes time and energy.
“Staying away” just ensures perpetual hate and division. It’s stupid advice. America literally tried that already and it didn’t work.
And this is all before we unpack the factual validity of these claims, and the underlying causes of that climate if those claims are really true.
I’m amazed at how many people are jumping to this guy’s defense. He doesn’t need his reputation defended, he dug his own hole.
> The logical advice to respond to that climate would be to act with dignity and treat other people like you’d like to be treated. To reach out and integrate, and build community. Doing that eventually solves the problem, even if it takes time and energy.
If you treated people with respect and dignity for your entire life and the result you get is increased hatred against you then disengaging is in fact a perfectly valid course of action.
"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."
I think he literally said white people should stay away from black people.
I forget which video it is and don't want to re-watch it anyways. I Googled the specific quote and it sounds about right with my memory (which admittedly could be faulty):
"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 f— away. Wherever you have to go, just get away".
I guess we could discuss whether this is straight up racist, but it sounds pretty bad to me.
There's a difference between speaking out against injustice when there is real risk involved, and speaking against a person because you don't like their views. Silence is appropriate in the latter case; or even better, express your own positive (in the logical sense) positions. Bloodless, priggish condemnation of individuals with fascist views makes fascism rise even faster than silence.
Anyone who claims they turned to fascism because they're angry people insulted fascists is not arguing in good faith.
Silence allows the messages of hatred to spread more loudly and more rapidly; if you leave fascists along they become emboldened and push the lines even further. We've seen this over and over, both historically and in America today.
>Anyone who claims they turned to fascism because they're angry people insulted fascists is not arguing in good faith.
I tend to agree, but I didn't make that argument. As an aside, bad faith is orthogonal to the argument, hence the existence of debate clubs. IOW, you could argue in bad faith for or against democracy, for or against fascism, etc.
>Silence allows the messages of hatred to spread more loudly and more rapidly
This depends. Any position can be weakened by what I call "badvocates", people are either personally despicable or who argue in ignorance, bad faith, or the ever-popular tactic (based on ad hominem) which simply asserts you are bad for believing a certain way. Sadly the impact of badvocacy is asymmetrical with fascism v liberalism, because the fascists intentionally embrace ignorance, non-sequitors, hypocrisy, personal attacks, whataboutism, and so on.
The badvocacy on the liberal side is particularly painful for me to see because its so avoidable. It's that strident tone, that indignant huff of impatience, its the moral certainty, the extremely judgemental social enforcement of rules where the only penalty is ostracism. In its own way it becomes a kind of fascism.
So, yes, speak the truth, call out others for speaking un-truth ("lying", sadly, is too narrow). But ultimately try to retain that common ground, the empathy that liberalism is famous for. This doesn't mean you can't be firm, or even use violence eventually. If it comes to that it means the violence comes regretfully, without hatred, hopeful that another course of action will arise. Fascism is pretty close to the "default" state of humans, which is why I think of it more as a regrettable regression than a moral failing, akin to having millions of adults pooping their pants.
I don't think it's possible to want to troll about those things without at least somewhat believing them. To troll about them at the expense of your career and reputation takes a deeper belief that goes beyond trolling.
He was not trolling. Please don’t persist the lie that people spouting racism are “only joking.” It’s harmful, disrespectful, and either purposefully in bad faith or embarrassingly naïve.
> He said it revealed that 26% of Black respondents said it’s “not OK to be White” and 21% said “they weren’t sure.” With a degree of amazement, Adams said: “That’s 47% of Blacks not willing to say it’s OK to be White. That’s like a real poll. This just happened.”
> Adams said that the poll demonstrated that there is “no fixing” current racial tensions in America, which is why White people should live in largely segregated neighborhoods.
> “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 author exclaimed. “Just get the (expletive) away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.”
...
> “I’ve been identifying as Black for a while because I like to be on the winning team,” Adams continued. “And I like to help. I always thought if you help the Black community, that’s sort of the biggest lever, you could find, the biggest benefit.”
> “But it turns out that nearly half of that team doesn’t think I’m okay to be White,” Adams said.
> Given the poll results, Adams said he’s now “going to re-identify as White,” arguing that he doesn’t “want to be a member of a hate group,” which he claimed he had “accidentally joined” with his supposed Black identification.
In his later life he was clearly trolling and dabbling in stirring up social media for fun, and it was hard to tell where the lines between that and his personal identity were.
Goodbye born entertainer and funny dork.