Musk beforehand tweeted, then later deleted, a reply to Adams’s tweet about media shops pulling his cartoon, wherein Musk requested, “What exactly are they complaining about?”
The billionaire’s feedback proceed a sample of Musk expressing extra concern in regards to the “free speech” of people that make racist or antisemitic feedback than in regards to the feedback themselves. Musk’s views on race have been the topic of scrutiny each at Twitter, the place he has reinstated far-right accounts, together with these of neo-Nazis and others beforehand banned for hate speech, and at Tesla, which has been the topic of a number of lawsuits alleging a tradition of rampant racism and sexual harassment within the office.
Musk didn’t reply to an e mail Sunday requesting remark.
Newspapers across the nation, together with The Washington Post, have dropped Adams’s “Dilbert” strip in current days within the wake of an episode of his YouTube present that aired Wednesday. In that video, Adams expressed outrage at a Rasmussen ballot that discovered 26 % of Black Americans disagreed with the assertion “It’s okay to be white,” in contrast with 12 % of the overall inhabitants. Another 21 % of Black respondents mentioned they have been “not sure” in regards to the assertion.
The controversy over the assertion could also be defined partly by the truth that it originated as a part of a web-based trolling marketing campaign by the alt-right and was subsequently embraced by white supremacists, in response to the Anti-Defamation League. But Adams prompt it proves that Black Americans hate Whites.
“If nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with White people … that’s a hate group,” Adams mentioned. “I don’t want to have anything to do with them. 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 … because there is no fixing this.”
In additional tweets Sunday, Musk agreed with a tweet that mentioned “Adams’ comments weren’t good” however there’s “an element of truth” to them, and prompt in a reply that media organizations promote a “false narrative” by giving extra protection to unarmed Black victims of police violence than they do to unarmed White victims of police violence.
Asked about his remarks and the cancellation of his cartoon, Adams instructed The Post in a textual content message: “Lots of people are angry, but I haven’t seen any disagreement yet, at least not from anyone who saw the context. Some questioned the poll data. That’s fair.”
Since taking on Twitter in October, Musk has softened its insurance policies towards hate speech and scaled again the corporate’s content material moderation efforts at a time of drastic cutbacks in its workforce. His first days as proprietor noticed a spike in virulently racist slurs on Twitter, after which Musk met with leaders of civil rights teams in a bid to assuage their considerations.
In that November assembly, held through Zoom, Musk assured leaders from teams, together with the NAACP and Color of Change, that he wouldn’t reinstate banned Twitter accounts till he had established a transparent course of for doing so. Representatives from civil rights teams could be included on a content material moderation council that he would type to advise Twitter on its insurance policies, he added.
But Musk by no means shaped the content material moderation council, and he started reinstating quite a few banned accounts weeks later, together with that of former president Donald Trump, after polling his personal Twitter followers on their opinion.
More broadly, Musk has lengthy decried what he calls a “woke mind virus.” The time period “woke” originated amongst Black activists to imply consciousness of, and vigilance towards, the White racism that they believed pervades American society. In current years. it has been adopted by leaders on the appropriate as a pejorative, akin to “politically correct,” suggesting oversensitivity to racism, sexism, transphobia and different types of bigotry.
In November, Musk posted a tweet wherein he appeared to mock T-shirts, created years earlier by a bunch of Black Twitter staff, that he mentioned stemmed from the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo., after the deadly taking pictures by police of a Black teen, Michael Brown.
Thomas Floyd and Michael Cavna contributed to this report.