Tesla Chief Executive Office Elon Musk speaks at his company’s factory in Fremont, California.
Noah Berger | Reuters
Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter, has accused “the media,” and “elite colleges and high schools” of being “racist” against white and Asian people, espousing his views without providing evidence on Sunday.
Musk posted his comments on Twitter, where he boasts nearly 130 million followers, in response to news that media organizations around the country decided to cut the comic strip “Dilbert” from syndication after its creator, Scott Adams, delivered a racist tirade in a video on his YouTube channel last week.
In the video, Adams discussed a poll conducted by right-leaning Rasmussen Reports that said 26% of Black respondents disagreed with the statement “It’s OK to be white.” The phrase referenced in their poll has been labeled a “hate slogan” by the Anti-Defamation League. In his video, Adams called Black people who rejected that phrase as a “hate group.”
Adams also said that he personally chose to live in a community where few or no Black people lived, and then advised his white viewers to “get the hell away from Black people,” saying he didn’t “want to have anything to do with them.”
Adams’ video was published during Black History month in the US, which was established in 1976 by President Gerald Ford as a period during which to honor the struggles and contributions of Black Americans.
Among the news outlets that dropped “Dilbert” were The Los Angeles Times, The Oregonian, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Washington Post and USA Today.
Musk’s track record
Brian Levin, a civil rights attorney and director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University said, in response to Musk’s tweets:
“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. A…
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