United States: Mr. Elon Musk has accused the media of being racist towards white and Asian people in the wake of criticism against a well-known cartoonist who made sexist remarks about Black people.
Mr. Musk, the CEO of Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX, made the remarks after several US newspapers stopped running the “Dilbert” comic strip after its writer Scott Adams made anti-Black remarks.
“For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians, same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America. Maybe they can try not being racist.” Mr. Musk tweeted.
We are at the phase in which people are hallucinating they disagree with me but they can’t name the disagreement. Sometimes where there is smoke there is just steam from a dryer vent.
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) February 26, 2023
Mr. Musk made the remarks in response to a Twitter user who claimed that the media had unfairly accused Adams of being a racist while making no such claims against Black Americans who had recently responded in a survey that they disagreed with the assertion that it is “OK to be white.”
Mr. Musk later agreed with a user who claimed that while Mr. Adams’ remarks “weren’t good,” US society had moved towards identity with “predictable results” and should go back to being colourblind regarding race.
Since the billionaire acquired Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion, Musk’s opinions on free speech, race, and other controversial topics have come under the limelight. Twitter has eased its hate speech moderation policies under Mr. Musk’s direction and has given controversial and far-right users, including neo-Nazis, their old accounts back.
Mr. Musk, who has referred to himself as an “absolutist” of free speech, has promised to promote a variety of opinions on Twitter and correct the liberal bias that, in his view, predominated under the platform’s previous administration.
Mr. Adams stated last week that white Americans should “stay the heck away from Black people” and that it “makes no sense whatsoever as a white citizen of America to try to support Black folks anymore” during an interview on his YouTube show. Mr. Adams, whose comic strip is widely syndicated in publications around the world, also said he went to a neighbourhood with a majority of white residents in order to “escape.”
In reaction to a Rasmussen study released earlier this month, which revealed that 26 percent of Black Americans disagreed with the phrase “It’s OK to be white” and 21 percent were “uncertain,” Adams made the remarks.
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