On Sunday, Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter, accused “the media” and “elite colleges and high schools” of being “racist” against white and Asian people, without providing evidence.
Musk made his remarks on Twitter, where he has nearly 130 million followers, in response to news that media outlets across the country have decided to pull the comic strip “Dilbert” from syndication after its creator, Scott Adams, delivered a racist tirade in a video posted 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 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 U.S., 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” was the Los Angeles Times, The Oregonian, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Washington Post, and USA Today.
The data on racism
Musk made his claims about “the media” and some higher education institutions and high schools in the U.S. without presenting any evidence.
Specifically, he wrote, “The media is racist.” He then added, “For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians. The same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America. Maybe they can try not being racist.”
According to Pew Research, newsroom employees are much more likely to be white (and male) than U.S. workers overall. In film and TV, according to McKinsey research, “Black talent is underrepresented across the industry, particularly off-screen.” Less than 6% of the writers, directors, and producers of U.S.-produced films are Black, McKinsey found.
According to the most recently available U.S. Census Bureau data, approximately 29% of non-Hispanic white people in the United States have a bachelor’s degree or higher levels of education, and approximately 18.4% of Black people in the United States have attained that level of education, and approximately 51.3% of Asian people have.
Despite Asian American educational attainment, Asians are underrepresented in leadership roles in academic libraries and higher education in the United States, according to Mihoko Hosoi’s research, which will be published in the Journal of Library Administration in 2022.
Musk also replied to one Twitter account that said unarmed white people affected by police violence only get a fraction of the media attention paid to Black people injured or killed by police. Musk claimed that the media coverage is “Very disproportionate to promote a false narrative.”
According to research by Brookings Institute, “Black people are 3.5 times more likely than white people to be killed by police when Blacks are not attacking or do not have a weapon,” and “Black teenagers are 21 times more likely than white teenagers to be killed by police.”
