Is Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams finally gone for good?

“Dilbert” author Scott Adams. // Courtesy of Facebook

“Dilbert” comic strip writer Scott Adams was dropped by Andrews McMeel Universal, Sunday after he went on a rant telling white people to “stay the hell away from Black people.”

The Kansas City-based media corporation announced that they were cutting ties with Adams via Twitter saying “Recent comments by Adam Scott regarding race and race relations do not align with our core values as a company.”

Numerous newspapers and media companies including The Washington Post, The USA Today Network and McClatchy have announced that they will no longer be publishing “Dilbert” comics.

The video in question was part of Adams’ online video show “Coffee with Scott Adams.” About 13 minutes into the nearly hour-long show, Adams brings up a recent opinion poll conducted by the Rasmussen Reports, a conservative-leaning polling company.

The survey asked a thousand American adults if they agree with the phrase “it’s okay to be white.” Seventy-two percent of respondents agreed, including 53% who are Black. Some 26% of Black respondents disagreed, and 21% said they are “not sure.”

“It turns out that nearly half of that team doesn’t think I’m okay to be white. I’m going to back off from being helpful to Black America because it doesn’t seem like it pays off,” he says after discussing the survey. “I’m not saying start a war or do anything bad. Nothing like that. I’m just saying get away. Just get away.”

These are not new behaviors from Adams. He has been promoting far-right, harmful ideals in his comics for over three decades, and this is the second time in a year that he has been dropped by multiple papers.

In May 2022, Adams published his first comic strip featuring a Black character, but of course, in true Adams fashion, the Black character was introduced as a token employee and used to mock transgender people.

After this comic was published, 77 newspapers announced that they would stop running “Dilbert” comics. However, even after this strip and his growing problematic Twitter presence, he was still being published in hundreds of newspapers.

Some editors feared being criticized for censorship if they cut ties with Adams. Therese Bottomly, the editor of The Orgonian even released a letter from the editor Saturday defending the choice to stop publishing Adams’ comics.

“Some readers no doubt will deride my decision as an example of overly “woke” culture or as a knee-jerk “politically correct” response. What about free speech, they might ask? Isn’t this censorship?” Bottomly writes. “No one is taking Adams’ free speech rights away. He is free to share his abhorrent comments on YouTube and Twitter so long as those companies allow them.”

Adams has not been cut from every news outlet, yet, but since his media company AMU finally put their foot down, hopefully others will continue to follow suit. Even Adams predicted in his video that this would be the end of his career.

“Most of my income will be gone by next week,” he says. “My reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed. You can’t come back from this, am I right?”