Comment by sanity
2 days ago
> He was certain it was due to DEI
He was told explicitly by his boss that they weren't promoting white men.
> The strip that got him dropped in 2022 featured a black character (first in the history of the cartoon) who "identifies as white".
That wasn't what got him dropped, he did an interview with Chris Cuomo where he explained what actually happened and why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_bv1jfYYu4
> He was told explicitly by his boss that they weren't promoting white men.
This is what he claims but I find it very difficult to believe. Why would management even say such a thing and expose themselves to a lawsuit? Let alone "not promoting white men". It's preposterous.
> Why would management even say such a thing and expose themselves to a lawsuit?
For years, many organizations wrongly assumed that anti-discrimination laws didn’t protect white men. Recent Supreme Court rulings—especially Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard—have made clear that assumption was false, prompting companies to rapidly rethink or abandon DEI programs.
which organizations were these? Title VII of the Civil Rights Act doesn't carve out any exceptions.
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Taking being passed for promotion all the way to SCOTUS is a big ask. For decades the default position was the law defends non-white/non-men against white men. In most other western countries you still can put out job ads saying basically "white men need not apply".
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> Why would management even say such a thing and expose themselves to a lawsuit?
The 1980s were not the 2020s. I can probably drop a half dozen working anecdotes from that time that would blow your mind…on all sorts of things.
I agree. I was there. There was no DEI and “not promoting white men” was not a thing.
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“Politically Correct” came out of the late 80s / early 90s era. I’m certain you saw socially insane things in the 80s. I’ve had similarly insane anecdotes of investors holding court in strip clubs dangling venture capital in front of our firm in the late 2010s. Shitty people in power will always exist.
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How many times have we read about managers that explicitly tells women they won't get promoted because they are expected to get pregnant and later leave? Sometimes the conversation even get recorded on tape.
Managers being explicit raciest and sexists are not that uncommon.
My SIL, this week(!) was told by her supervisor that if she tries to apply for another team and doesn't get that job, she'll be set back in her career progression in her team. Asshole managers are everywhere.
Im not suprised.
As recently as 2024, my own fortune 50 company had a policy where manager bonuses were determined POC hiring rates.
Ive been told by recruiters that they arent hiring white men in the 2020's.
In the 2000's I was also turned down by a fortune 50 defense contractor who said they needed more women to secure better federal contracts.
People did all kinds of crazy shit at work (and everywhere else too) in the 80s before everyone lawyered up - guys would literally pinch a girl's ass, people used slurs to each other regularly (and often laughed about it), they smoked and drank all the time. A manager somewhere telling a rejected candidate straight up "sorry man but I've got to hire a <<insert minority>> this time" is not at all difficult to believe.
It was 1999 I think, I was doing a placement at a media company. One of the PAs was heavily pregnant, an old guy in the office said to her "My my Jane, your breasts are coming along nicely."
WTF!
It's because the boss was lying to him
Both of these rebuttals seem they rely on taking Adams' word for it?
If we’re talking about what he believes, I’m not sure how else you’d determine that besides listening to what he’s said.
The problem is that people are horrible narrators about their own issues/past. They like to leave out critical information.
The idea of a company in the 80's going around that they are promoting Asians to positions over white people, sounds as far fetched as finding oil in my backyard. The reverse is way more likely in that time periode.
More then likely, he was not qualified for the job. But people often have a hard time accepting this, and feel entitled for position. Often by virtue of working somewhere longer. When passed over for promotion, then they create narratives its not themselves who is the issue, but it must be somebody else their fault.
So when you 20, 30, 40 years later tell the story, are you going to say "well, i was not qualified" or are you going to double down that you got passed over for a promotion, because "somebody had it out for me", or as "DEI hire" as that was the trending topic in conservative circles. What is a little lie to make yourself feel better, and have the world perceive you as the victim of horrible DEI hiring practices ... in the 80s!!!
If people think racism is rampaging today, they really did not live in the 80's... So yea, if it smell funny, you know there is bull.... involved.
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We're not talking about what he believes, we're talking about a) why he didn't get a promotion and b) why he was dropped from syndication.
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He has been proven to be an extremely unreliably narrator on multiple occasions and is prone to changing his story. I think he has always had such inclinations, but other folks kept him restrained and I’m not sure what happened there in the end.
I’m reminded that he is on the record as having initially said that he enjoyed working on the Dilbert TV show, but it was too much work and had the misfortune of being moved one of those “death” time slots. Then at some point he started baselessly claiming it was killed due to DEI.
Also, he has a very bizarre history of sockpuppeting that just raises more questions. He was called out by Metafilter for this and acted like he was playing some kind of 4D chess with them [1].
[1] https://mefiwiki.com/wiki/Scott_Adams,_plannedchaos
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Why wouldn't we take his word for it? We take people's word for much more serious and dangerous claims than these personal autobiographical reports.
I believe the correct statement is "believe victims"
Even if we believed that, why is one such experience an understandable trigger to turn to fascism? It is nice double standard, because those who are not white men are expected to accept similar unfairness without becoming fascists themselves.
I really really doubt his boss would have told him they weren't promoting white men. It is asking to get sued.
People get this a lot. They want a woman to fill the role or quota, or they want X attribute to shore up "representation". In South Africa people will be openly told that they will never get a promotion because of their race and sex.
I'm NOT saying that wasn't their motivation, I'm saying they would never explicitly tell anyone that it was their motivation as it is very illegal.
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