So, when Rasmussen reveals that 47% of black Americans do not consider it okay to be white, that is not a problem;
Sorry Nominal Animal, but I think you are being naïve here.
Could be. Also, my command of the English language does not include interpreting the subtext other people may or will read into that phrase.
(I am aware of the various uses the phrase has had, and its origins at 4chan, but I do not know their effect on people in general. I do not follow social media.)
I did watch his video, and while I considered him kinda stupid, definitely frustrated, I didn't really see him as
racist or truly bigoted (in their traditional definitions prior to year 2010 or so). I do not know his output, nor have I read his other writings or videos, except for the Dilbert comic. Some of the pointy-haired-boss and marketing-department and general workplace interactions are apt: they used to be taped to the doors of many an engineer and scientist I know.
What I did see, is a situation analogous to e.g. Jordan Peterson (also a flawed person) being called alt-right for trying to help young people find their way into traditional adulthood; analogous to how my own opinions and attitude are generally classified as "transphobic racist" here in Finland now.
I admit, much of my attitude is borne out of frustration. As I've discussed before, social cues others perceive clearly are hard for me to discern. Things like ethnicity and even gender are not obvious to me, and I just do not pay attention to such details because I do not care about such details: they have no value to me in the interaction I have with the other person. And I do place high value in human-human interaction. This is not a choice on my part, this is how my brain works. (It is why I tend to use "they" in English. The hardest thing to me in Swedish and German is the gender of words.)
Yet, it is now generally accepted to be 'proof' that I am racist and transphobic, at least here in Finland!
It is illogical, irrational, and most of all,
unfair.
In other words, perhaps I am projecting my own deep-seated feelings of being treated unfairly with regards to the issue here, placing myself in Scott Adams' stead.
All I can say is that the reactions towards him do not seem logical or rational to me at all; only purely emotive,
mobbish,
deindividualized.
To evaluate that claim of mine, consider the same statements if made by a black person, or a devout Muslim.
It is my belief that as a true egalitarian, I must not let the ethnic or religious background affect my reaction or understanding of the message or claims. Such details only provide background information as to
why that person might construct such statements, and do not affect the veracity or reliability of such statements at all.
As such, I do believe this is a topic many engineers and scientists –– anyone thing-oriented rather than socially-oriented –– will encounter, as the general Western society turns away from logic and rationality into emotive assessment of statements, effects, statistics, and persons. You too will someday be me, or Scott Adams, if you talk to anyone you don't know, or Dog Forbid, make a video where you talk about anything topical.
Here in Finland, when a statistic shows something unfavorable to the prevalent political/social narrative, the immediate action is to stop collecting that data and publishing the statistic. It has become ridiculously predictable whenever unpleasant data is uncovered in the last ten years or so. Do expect it to happen in your legislations too, because it seems to be quite effective, and basically nobody seems to object.