Sunday, February 26, 2023

About that poll Scott Adams referred to...

Scott Adams, creator of the cartoon strip "Dilbert" and major Trump supporter, has been been in the news lately for the blatant racism he espoused in this video. 

I was curious what poll he was citing to suggest that "nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with white people." As it turns out, he was referring to one from Rasmussen, a firm with an obvious GOP bias. About a week ago they released the results of a poll that included these two questions.

1. Do you agree or disagree with this statement: “It’s OK to be white.”

2. Do you agree or disagree with this statement: “Black people can be racist, too.”

Right wing news sites reported that the results demonstrated that "voters are not buying into woke racial politics and anti-white attacks from liberals" because "72% agreed with the statement, 'It’s OK to be white.' Even a majority of black people, 53%, agreed." Apparently Scott Adams saw things differently and zeroed in on the 47% of Black people who didn't agree with that statement.

The phrase "it's OK to be white" seems pretty innocuous, but that's only if you don't know its origin. 

The phrase “It’s Okay To Be White” is a slogan popularized in late 2017 as a trolling campaign by members of the controversial discussion forum 4chan. The original idea behind the campaign was to choose an ostensibly innocuous and inoffensive slogan, put that slogan on fliers bereft of any other words or imagery, then place the fliers in public locations. Originators assumed that “liberals” would react negatively to such fliers and condemn them or take them down, thus “proving” that liberals did not even think it was “okay" to be white.

That trolling campaign was so successful that Rasmussen polled the slogan - allowing right wing sites to proclaim that voters aren't buying into woke racial politics and Adams to say that anyone who doesn't agree with it is part of a "hate group."

This is how the party whose mantra has become "America is not a racist country" fuels racism as their platform.  

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