Dilbert comic strip cancelled after racism row

Publishers drop internationally known cartoon after creator calls black people 'hate group'

Scott Adams with Dilbert in his California studio in 2006. AP

Dilbert, the popular American comic strip about the absurdities of office life, will no longer be published in thousands of newspapers, websites and books after its creator gave a racist monologue describing black people as a "hate group".

Illustrator Scott Adams made a podcast last week in which he quoted a poll by Rasmussen Reports that found 53 per cent of black people in the survey agreed with the comment: “It’s okay to be white.”

"If nearly half of all blacks are not okay with white people, according to this poll, not according to me, that’s a hate group, and I don’t want to have anything to do with them," said Adams, who is white.

Adams, who launched Dilbert in 1989, said he had spent years trying to be a helpful ally to black people.

But after seeing the poll, he said it made "no sense as as a white citizen of America to try to help black citizens any more".

He said that white people should "get the hell away from black people".

The backlash was quick, with newspapers across the US dropping Dilbert, in many cases ending a decades-long run of the comic.

Andrews McMeel Universal, the main distributor of Dilbert, said in a tweet late on Sunday that it had severed the company’s relationship with the artist.

“As a media and communications company, AMU values free speech,” it said. “But we will never support any commentary rooted in discrimination or hate.”

Adams said his book agent dropped him and the publisher of a non-Dilbert related book shelved that project as well. He plans to continue publishing the strip on his own website.

In another podcast on Monday, he said the media was "lying" about the context surrounding his comments, but various publishers across the US denounced his words as racist, hateful and discriminatory.

Twitter chief Elon Musk, however, took to his platform on Sunday to call the media racist after several newspapers announced they were dropping Dilbert.

Syndicated in the US and printed in publications in dozens of countries around the globe, Dilbert was a mainstay of newspaper comic sections for 33 years.

The cartoon chronicles the trials and tribulations of life in the office, usually through interactions of the titular character, Dilbert, a socially awkward engineer.