On February 26, billionaire Elon Musk accused the media of being racist against whites and Asians. His comments came after newspapers in the United States fired a white comic strip author for making offensive comments about African-Americans.
After its creator, Scott Adams, posted racist comments on his YouTube channel on Wednesday and said that black Americans were a hate group, several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today, decided to cancel the cartoon “Dilbert.” In responses to tweets about the controversy, the chief executive of Tesla and Twitter said that the media has long been racist against people of colour but that they are now “racist against whites and Asians.”
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Mr. Musk tweeted, “Maybe they can try their best to stop being racist.”
Mr. Musk stated that the coverage is “Very disproportionate to promote a false narrative” in response to an account that claimed that white victims of police violence get a fraction of the media coverage compared to Black victims.
A request for a comment from Mr. Musk was not immediately met with a response. Since Mr. Musk took over Twitter in October, his perspectives on various social issues have been subjected to a closer examination than ever before.
He has engaged in a debate with civil rights organisations concerning the level of protection that Twitter provides against the publication of offensive content and the reactivation of some accounts that had previously been suspended. Twitter has implemented some new controls for the placement of advertisements in response to the departure of certain advertisers who were concerned about the integrity of their brands.
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The most recent tweets from Mr. Musk come shortly after the creator of Dilbert suggested that white Americans should “get the hell away from Black people.” The cartoonist, Mr. Adams, was providing a response to a poll that was conducted by the conservative organisation Rasmussen Reports. The poll found that 26% of black respondents said they disagreed with the statement “It’s OK to be white.”
The decision to not publish the cartoon was described as “not a difficult decision” by the Plain Dealer newspaper, which is published in Ohio. The article was published on Friday.
In the video, Adams discusses the results of a survey that was carried out by the right-leaning Rasmussen Reports and found that 26% of black respondents did not agree with the statement that “It’s OK to be white.” According to the findings of their poll, the phrase in question has been dubbed a “hate slogan” by the Anti-Defamation League. Adams referred to people of African descent who disagreed with the phrase as a “hate group” in his video.
Adams also stated that he had made the decision to live in an area with a minority or no population of black people because he did not “want to have anything to do with them.” He went on to advise his white audience members to “get the hell away from Black people” and said that he himself had made the decision to live in an area with a minority or no population of black people.
The video that Adams created was released in the United States during the month of February, which is known as Black History Month and was established by President Gerald Ford in 1976 as a time to recognise the accomplishments of African Americans and pay tribute to their struggles.
The Los Angeles Times, The Oregonian, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Washington Post, and USA Today are just some of the news organisations that have discontinued publication of “Dilbert.”
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The preceding work of Musk
In response to Musk’s tweets, Brian Levin, a civil rights attorney and the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, said the following: “Systemic racism requires not only widespread bigotry to be held within a group but also a structural component that allows discrimination and oppression to be imposed on a minority because of an advantage of access and power.”
[Musk’s tweets] “Systemic racism requires not only widespread bigotry to It’s possible that a white South African billionaire who just recently lost a high-profile racial discrimination case isn’t the best person to offer advice.Also Read: Decentralized Twitter Invite-only iOS App Bluesky Is Now Available.
The evidence regarding racism
Musk did not provide any evidence to support his claims regarding “the media,” as well as certain institutions of higher education and high schools located in the United States.
In particular, he wrote the sentence, “The media is racist.” He continued by saying, “For a very long time, the media in the United States was racist against people of colour, but now they’re racist against white people and Asian people.” The same thing occurred with prestigious high schools and colleges in the United States. Perhaps they could give up their racist views for once.”
According to the findings of Pew Research, employees in newsrooms are much more likely to be white (and male) than workers in the United States in general. According to research conducted by McKinsey, “Black talent is underrepresented across the industry, particularly off-screen,” in the fields of film and television. According to the findings of McKinsey, the percentage of Black people working in the film industry in the United States is significantly lower than 6%.
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