Loaded Question By Right Wing Rasmussen Leads To Dilbert's Cancellation

[BarryLaverty]

Wondering if some of you will defend this. Poor, poor white people. 

 

(Washington Post)

A poll asked if it’s ‘OK to be white.’ Here’s why the phrase is loaded.
Scholars raise questions about the Rasmussen poll that Scott Adams cited in the racist rant that led to ‘Dilbert’s’ cancellation
By Marisa Iati and  Scott Clement 
February 28, 2023 at 11:36 a.m. EST

The polling group presented survey takers with an oddly phrased question: Did they agree or disagree with the statement, ‘It’s OK to be white’?

When a slim majority of Black respondents said yes, comic strip creator Scott Adams cited the results to argue that Black Americans are “a hate group,” urging White people to “get the hell away from” Black people. His racist rant prompted hundreds of newspapers to drop his “Dilbert” comic in disapproval, rendering the decades-old cartoon homeless.

The survey question was asked by the conservative-leaning Rasmussen Reports, whose head pollster described it as a “simple” and “uncontroversial” query. But, in fact, the phrase in question has a freighted history that implies more than its face-value meaning.

Comics industry reacts to ‘Dilbert’ creator Scott Adams’s racist rant

The phrase “it’s okay to be White” was popularized in 2017 as a trolling campaign meant to provoke liberals into condemning the statement and thus, the theory went, proving their own unreasonableness. White supremacists picked up on the trend, adding neo-Nazi language, websites or images to fliers with the phrase.

Survey takers familiar with that background may have wanted to avoid expressing approval of wording co-opted in that way, experts said.

Rasmussen, citing respondents reached through automated landline calls and a panel of volunteer participants, reported that 53 percent of the 117 Black participants agreed with the statement but 26 percent of Black participants disagreed and 21 percent said they weren’t sure.

“Anyone who did know the history of it or who had a suspicion about the history of it might react to that Rasmussen question with some skepticism,” said Nicholas Valentino, a political scientist at the University of Michigan who studies racial attitudes and public emotions. “And that wouldn’t be a sign that they didn’t like White people.”

In a video that Rasmussen posted on Twitter alongside the survey results, head pollster Mark Mitchell presented the question as a good-faith effort to capture public opinion — something he claimed Rasmussen is unique in doing. (“The reality of American public opinion does not match what you’ve being told in the news, at schools or colleges, by corporations and by your public officials.”) Mitchell suggested that mainstream journalists would hesitate to report on the result of the question because it “conclusively undermines the current racial orthodoxy.”

“All we did was ask very simple questions that should be uncontroversial, and we are reporting on what Americans told us, nothing more,” Mitchell said in the video. While Adams cited the number of skeptical Black respondents to raise race-based alarm, Mitchell cited the majority of respondents of all races who approve of the phrase to take aim at liberal-leaning groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center for designating it a problematic phrase.

In recent years, Rasmussen has shifted from serving primarily as a right-leaning polling firm to more actively amplifying conservative causes, with a website featuring commentary from conservative and libertarian pundits. In the video about the recent survey question, Mitchell also hyped polling results that he said showed “nearly half the country is concerned that vaccines are causing a significant number of unexplained deaths.” (The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said there is no evidence that coronavirus vaccines are causing deaths.) On Twitter, the firm also elevated misinformation about alleged fraud in the 2020 presidential election and highlighted conspiracy theories suggesting that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a “set-up.”

Rasmussen did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment on the history of the phrase “it’s okay to be White.”

White supremacists have used the phrase since at least the early 2000s, said Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow for the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. Six years ago, the term gained popularity when people on the discussion forum 4chan decided to employ the phrase as a stunt.

The trolls posted sheets of paper with just the words “it’s okay to be White” on building doors and other public locations in the hope that some people would become upset and express frustration. Many people saw through the prank, Pitcavage said, and recognized its malicious intent.

The next year, the trolling movement picked up again. A post on 4chan said the goal was to “bait the left into revealing their hatred and racism towards white people for the voting public to see,” according to the Anti-Defamation League. The posters appeared on the campuses of at least 14 universities, including on a statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Cabrillo College in Northern California. At Duke University, pumpkins carved with swastikas were found near some of the fliers.

The phrase continued to pop up in the years that followed. A student was expelled from Oklahoma City University School of Law in 2019 after posting fliers with those words. In 2020, a man plastered a North Carolina synagogue with posters of the term twice in three days. In Portland, Maine, this month, several dozen people staged a counter-demonstration against a former city council candidate holding a banner with the phrase.

For those who know about that baggage, Pitcavage said, the words “it’s okay to be White” are not nearly as innocuous as they may seem. Even for people who are unfamiliar with it, he said, the weird phrasing may suggest that it is meant to troll or trigger them.

“You can see that phrase and easily recognize that someone’s trying to get a rise out of you by using it,” Pitcavage said. “Disapproving of that statement and disapproving of whiteness or White people are two very different things.”

 

Polls testing agreement with political slogans also can confuse respondents who are unfamiliar with them. Across demographics, many respondents to the Rasmussen survey expressed uncertainty when asked whether “it’s okay to be White.” In addition to the 21 percent of Black people who said they were “not sure,” 20 percent of Democrats, 19 percent of women, and 25 percent of people who identified as a race other than Black or White said the same.

Other surveys suggest that White and Black Americans have largely positive views of each other. In the 2020 American National Election Studies survey, which asked a random sample of Americans to rate a variety of groups on a “feeling thermometer” scale from 0 to 100, most Black and White Americans expressed positive views of the other group.

Among Black Americans, 62 percent rated “whites” warmly (51 degrees or higher), 18 percent coldly (below 50 degrees) and another 21 percent right at 50 degrees. Among White Americans, 66 percent rated “blacks” warmly, 6 percent coldly and 28 percent right at 50 degrees. Among Hispanic adults, 58 percent rated White people warmly and 71 percent said the same for Black people.

[Youngcoach123]

I’m guessing you didn’t listen to Scott’s “rant”. 

Edited February 28 by Youngcoach123

[Youngcoach123]

Also “Right Wing Rasmussen” lol

[Youngcoach123]

Poor poor white people

[Youngcoach123]

[JBizzle]

54 minutes ago, BarryLaverty said:

Wondering if some of you will defend this. Poor, poor white people. 

 

(Washington Post)

A poll asked if it’s ‘OK to be white.’ Here’s why the phrase is loaded.
Scholars raise questions about the Rasmussen poll that Scott Adams cited in the racist rant that led to ‘Dilbert’s’ cancellation
By Marisa Iati and  Scott Clement 
February 28, 2023 at 11:36 a.m. EST

The polling group presented survey takers with an oddly phrased question: Did they agree or disagree with the statement, ‘It’s OK to be white’?

When a slim majority of Black respondents said yes, comic strip creator Scott Adams cited the results to argue that Black Americans are “a hate group,” urging White people to “get the hell away from” Black people. His racist rant prompted hundreds of newspapers to drop his “Dilbert” comic in disapproval, rendering the decades-old cartoon homeless.

The survey question was asked by the conservative-leaning Rasmussen Reports, whose head pollster described it as a “simple” and “uncontroversial” query. But, in fact, the phrase in question has a freighted history that implies more than its face-value meaning.

Comics industry reacts to ‘Dilbert’ creator Scott Adams’s racist rant

The phrase “it’s okay to be White” was popularized in 2017 as a trolling campaign meant to provoke liberals into condemning the statement and thus, the theory went, proving their own unreasonableness. White supremacists picked up on the trend, adding neo-Nazi language, websites or images to fliers with the phrase.

Survey takers familiar with that background may have wanted to avoid expressing approval of wording co-opted in that way, experts said.

Rasmussen, citing respondents reached through automated landline calls and a panel of volunteer participants, reported that 53 percent of the 117 Black participants agreed with the statement but 26 percent of Black participants disagreed and 21 percent said they weren’t sure.

“Anyone who did know the history of it or who had a suspicion about the history of it might react to that Rasmussen question with some skepticism,” said Nicholas Valentino, a political scientist at the University of Michigan who studies racial attitudes and public emotions. “And that wouldn’t be a sign that they didn’t like White people.”

In a video that Rasmussen posted on Twitter alongside the survey results, head pollster Mark Mitchell presented the question as a good-faith effort to capture public opinion — something he claimed Rasmussen is unique in doing. (“The reality of American public opinion does not match what you’ve being told in the news, at schools or colleges, by corporations and by your public officials.”) Mitchell suggested that mainstream journalists would hesitate to report on the result of the question because it “conclusively undermines the current racial orthodoxy.”

“All we did was ask very simple questions that should be uncontroversial, and we are reporting on what Americans told us, nothing more,” Mitchell said in the video. While Adams cited the number of skeptical Black respondents to raise race-based alarm, Mitchell cited the majority of respondents of all races who approve of the phrase to take aim at liberal-leaning groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center for designating it a problematic phrase.

In recent years, Rasmussen has shifted from serving primarily as a right-leaning polling firm to more actively amplifying conservative causes, with a website featuring commentary from conservative and libertarian pundits. In the video about the recent survey question, Mitchell also hyped polling results that he said showed “nearly half the country is concerned that vaccines are causing a significant number of unexplained deaths.” (The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said there is no evidence that coronavirus vaccines are causing deaths.) On Twitter, the firm also elevated misinformation about alleged fraud in the 2020 presidential election and highlighted conspiracy theories suggesting that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a “set-up.”

Rasmussen did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment on the history of the phrase “it’s okay to be White.”

White supremacists have used the phrase since at least the early 2000s, said Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow for the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. Six years ago, the term gained popularity when people on the discussion forum 4chan decided to employ the phrase as a stunt.

The trolls posted sheets of paper with just the words “it’s okay to be White” on building doors and other public locations in the hope that some people would become upset and express frustration. Many people saw through the prank, Pitcavage said, and recognized its malicious intent.

The next year, the trolling movement picked up again. A post on 4chan said the goal was to “bait the left into revealing their hatred and racism towards white people for the voting public to see,” according to the Anti-Defamation League. The posters appeared on the campuses of at least 14 universities, including on a statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Cabrillo College in Northern California. At Duke University, pumpkins carved with swastikas were found near some of the fliers.

The phrase continued to pop up in the years that followed. A student was expelled from Oklahoma City University School of Law in 2019 after posting fliers with those words. In 2020, a man plastered a North Carolina synagogue with posters of the term twice in three days. In Portland, Maine, this month, several dozen people staged a counter-demonstration against a former city council candidate holding a banner with the phrase.

For those who know about that baggage, Pitcavage said, the words “it’s okay to be White” are not nearly as innocuous as they may seem. Even for people who are unfamiliar with it, he said, the weird phrasing may suggest that it is meant to troll or trigger them.

“You can see that phrase and easily recognize that someone’s trying to get a rise out of you by using it,” Pitcavage said. “Disapproving of that statement and disapproving of whiteness or White people are two very different things.”

 

Polls testing agreement with political slogans also can confuse respondents who are unfamiliar with them. Across demographics, many respondents to the Rasmussen survey expressed uncertainty when asked whether “it’s okay to be White.” In addition to the 21 percent of Black people who said they were “not sure,” 20 percent of Democrats, 19 percent of women, and 25 percent of people who identified as a race other than Black or White said the same.

Other surveys suggest that White and Black Americans have largely positive views of each other. In the 2020 American National Election Studies survey, which asked a random sample of Americans to rate a variety of groups on a “feeling thermometer” scale from 0 to 100, most Black and White Americans expressed positive views of the other group.

Among Black Americans, 62 percent rated “whites” warmly (51 degrees or higher), 18 percent coldly (below 50 degrees) and another 21 percent right at 50 degrees. Among White Americans, 66 percent rated “blacks” warmly, 6 percent coldly and 28 percent right at 50 degrees. Among Hispanic adults, 58 percent rated White people warmly and 71 percent said the same for Black people.

Are we supposed to defend the phrase "It's OK to be white?"  I've seen plenty of videos saying otherwise.  Should I be looking to become non-white?

I haven't read the "rant" or heard it, so I won't defend it.  But they don't cancel black people who say similar things about white people.  They promote them on CNN and let them teach college courses at Ivy league schools.

[DannyZuco]

This seems to be more liberal outrage about something that really doesn't affect many people, outside the political pundits. The liberals screamed the same thing 10 years ago when Romney was running for president. Everyone that is NOT white can't be a racists, only white folks can. This is nothing more than Barry parroting the message of the liberal media to make white people think that they should NOT be white. 

Of course the liberal media believes that everyone that uses this statement is doing it for facist reasons, can't just be a question, just to ask people. I guess if you ask these same people if it's "ok to be black", and 47% answer "no", there will "heck" to pay in the liberal media. SMH

[Monte1076]

3 minutes ago, DannyZuco said:

facist reasons

Because obviously, if you're not Liberal or Leftist, you're fascist. Didn't you know that?

[DannyZuco]

7 minutes ago, Monte1076 said:

Because obviously, if you're not Liberal or Leftist, you're fascist. Didn't you know that?

I know for reality, that the liberals and leftists are the real fascists, not those that think independently and want personal responsibility to rule, not everyone living on a government teat.....

[RETIREDFAN1]

Who cares??? I like Dilbert and will continue to read it .......

[Monte1076]

1 minute ago, RETIREDFAN1 said:

Who cares??? I like Dilbert and will continue to read it .......

Have you read "The Dilbert Principle"?

[RETIREDFAN1]

2 minutes ago, Monte1076 said:

Have you read "The Dilbert Principle"?

Nahh ....I catch the comic online......

[Monte1076]

1 minute ago, RETIREDFAN1 said:

Nahh ....I catch the comic online......

It's a dated book, but it has some funny stuff in it. It's an alternate take on the "Peter Principle".

For those not familiar:

Quote

The Peter Principle is an observation that the tendency in most organizational hierarchies, such as that of a corporation, is for every employee to rise in the hierarchy through promotion until they reach a level of respective incompetence.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/peter-principle.asp

Whereas the Dilbert Principle:

Quote

The Dilbert principle, by contrast, assumes that hierarchy just serves as a means for removing the incompetent to "higher" positions where they will be unable to cause damage to the workflow, assuming that the upper echelons of an organization have little relevance to its actual production, and that the majority of real, productive work in a company is done by people who rank lower. Unlike the Peter principle, the promoted individuals were not particularly good at any job they previously had, so awarding them a supervisory position is a way to remove them from the workforce without actually dismissing them, rather than a reward for meritorious service. An earlier formulation of this effect was known as Putt's Law (1981), credited to the pseudonymous author Archibald Putt ("Technology is dominated by two types of people, those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand.").

 

[DaveTV1]

The poll itself show that blacks are racists towards white people, because 53% of those surveyed think it's not okay to be white.  Yet the media and the left spin Scott Adams rant to say he is racist.  Why would anyone want to be around someone that wasn't comfortable with their skin color or hated them for their skin color regardless of what color they are.  People should treat others regardless of race the same, unless any person (race does not matter) does something that is harmful to someone.  

I had a friend who is black that stated that once blacks and browns gained the majority that whitey was going to be in trouble.  I pointed out that was a racist statement, which he thought wasn't.  How is it not racist when should that occur they begin treating Asians and Caucasians as an inferior race ?  I realize white people did it in the past, but we should move on from that.  

By Larry saying poor, poor white people he is showing that he is racist as well.  

[RETIREDFAN1]

Anybody who even notices race is a racist.......

[KirtFalcon]

Black lives matter ...

White lives matter ...

All lives matter ....

It's ok to be black ....

It's ok to be white ....

It's NOT OK to be racist regardless of your skin color .....

 

Edited February 28 by KirtFalcon
yo mama

[gamewatcher63]

Poor Poor Barry people…….

[Youngcoach123]

 

[DaveTV1]

3 hours ago, Youngcoach123 said:

 

Ride public transportation and you'll see this on a weekly basis.  I shut them down by telling them that we are all children of God and how can you be racist against your brother and sister.  Now how my duffel bag is racist is beyond me.  Some people will stereotype whites and Republicans as being racist

[Youngcoach123]

 

[BarryLaverty]

1 hour ago, Youngcoach123 said:

 

Neat trick Adams riding the 'righteous white guy' route all the way to the poor house. 

[Monte1076]

10 hours ago, BarryLaverty said:

Neat trick Adams riding the 'righteous white guy' route all the way to the poor house. 

So what's your take on Ms. "white fragility" herself, Robin DiAngelo, basically saying the same thing Scott Adams did?