SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Sunday accused the “media” and “elite colleges and high schools” of being “racist” against whites and Asians, spying on their views without providing evidence.
Musk posted his comments on Twitter, where he has nearly 130 million followers, in response to news that media organizations across the country decided to cut the comic strip “Dilbert” from syndication after its creator Scott Adams, a Condemned the racist in the video last week on his YouTube channel.
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 okay to be white”. The phrase referenced in his survey has been called 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 went on to advise his white audience to “get the hell away from black people”, saying that he would “do anything”. didn’t want to” them.”
Adams’ video was published during Black History Month in America, which was established in 1976 by President Gerald Ford as a period during which the struggles and contributions of black Americans were honored.
News outlets that dropped “Dilbert” included the Los Angeles Times, The Oregonian, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Washington Post, and USA Today.
Musk’s track record
Brian Levine, 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 tweet: “Systemic racism requires not only widespread bigotry within a group but a structural component. It allows discrimination and oppression to be enforced on a minority due to the advantage of access and power. A white billionaire from South Africa, who recently lost a high profile racial discrimination case, might advise not be in the best position to give.”
As CNBC previously reported, a federal court in San Francisco ruled that Tesla must pay damages to a former employee, Owen Diaz, after he endured a hostile work environment and racist abuse at the company’s factory where he Previously worked as an elevator operator.
Additionally, the EEOC, a federal agency responsible for enforcing civil rights laws against workplace discrimination, issued a cause-of-cause finding against Tesla last year, according to a financial filing from the company.
Prior to the EEOC’s finding, the California Department of Civil Rights, formerly known as the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, sued Tesla after a three-year investigation that found widespread racist discrimination at Tesla factories and facilities across the state. was accused of.
The CRD alleged that Tesla placed black employees in lower-level roles in the company while they had the skills and experience to be promoted to more senior roles; Black workers were assigned more demanding, dangerous, and dirty work in their facilities; and retaliated against black workers who formally complained about what they endured, including racist slurs used by managers.
Tesla called CRD’s lawsuit “misguided” and later reversed the agency.
data on racism
Musk made his claims about “the media” and certain higher education institutions and high schools in America without presenting any evidence.
Specifically, he wrote, “the media is racist.” Then he added, “For too long, the American media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against white and Asian people. The same thing happened to America’s elite colleges and high schools. Maybe they’re not racist after all.” You can try to be
According to Pew Research, newsroom workers are more likely to be white (and male) than the American workforce overall. In film and TV, according to McKinsey research, “Black talent is underrepresented throughout the industry, especially off-screen.” McKinsey found that less than 6% of US-produced films have writers, directors and producers who are Black.
According to the most recently available US Census Bureau data, about 29% of non-Hispanic white people in the US have received a bachelor’s degree or higher level of education, compared to about 18.4% of black people in the US is, and about 51.3% of Asians have done so.
Despite Asian American educational attainment, Asians are under-represented in leadership roles in American academic libraries and higher education, according to research by Mihoko Hosoi published in the Journal of Library Administration in 2022.
Musk also responded to a Twitter account that said unarmed white people affected by police violence receive only a fraction of the media attention paid to black people injured or killed by police. Musk claimed that the media coverage was “grossly inconsistent promoting a false narrative.”
According to Brookings Institute research, “Black people are 3.5 times more likely than white people to be killed by police when blacks are not assaulting or carrying a weapon,” and “Black teens 21 times more likely than white adolescents.” killed by the police.
hate speech on twitter
In response to Musk’s tweet, Imran Ahmed, CEO and founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said, “Elon Musk wants to portray himself as some weird, bizarre champion of anti-racism, when in fact when he took over Twitter, So they made a series of troubling decisions to change their rules to welcome racist hate on the platform and, as our research has shown, to profit from the controversy and the attention hate generates.
Ahmed also asked the remaining advertisers to re-evaluate whether they want to spend their budget on Twitter, given Musk’s beliefs and the changes he has made to the Twitter platform.
Since leading the $44 billion leveraged buyout of Twitter late last year and appointing himself “Chief Twit,” or CEO, Musk has stirred controversy and lost money in the social media business.
Under Musk’s watch, Twitter has restored the accounts of some previously banned and divisive figures, including Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi website. The Center for Countering Digital Hate found that their moves led to an unprecedented increase in hate speech on the platform, and there was immediate opposition from civil rights leaders.
Since then hundreds of Twitter’s top advertisers have stopped or withdrawn from advertising spend there. One firm estimates that Twitter’s advertising revenue declined by 70% in December compared to the previous year. Musk acknowledged in a November tweet that the company suffered a “huge decline in revenue” after advertisers halted spending on the social media platform.
Musk and representatives for Twitter, SpaceX and Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
