Critics: Black Dilbert Character ‘Dave’ Is Anti-trans Because He ‘Identifies as White’

Critics are complaining that “Dave,” the new black character in the Dilbert cartoon strip, is “anti-trans” because he “identifies” as white.

I'm still not cancelled? Day 2.

Identify Any Way You Want https://t.co/FhW87gNNxh via @Dilbert_Daily

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 3, 2022

Dave's Urban Culture
https://t.co/Ui0pw1Dcom via @Dilbert_Daily

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 6, 2022

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, had previously explained on his daily broadcast and on Twitter that he had not included a black character in the comic strip before because every character must have a personality flaw, and he feared being accused of racism.

There are no black people in the strip because all of my characters require personality flaws to make them funny. My black readers called me racist for including Asok (from India) in the strip. His only flaw is that he's young.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) January 30, 2018

After floating the idea of asking left-wing black writer Ta-Nehisi Coates — who is also involved in the comic book industry — to help develop a black character, Adams tried crowdsourcing ideas for a black character by asking black artists for help:

Challenge for Black American cartoonists: Design a Black character to include in the Dilbert cast and paste into comments. Must be similar to my existing style and easy for me to reproduce. And you MUST specify the humorous character flaw that every comic character displays.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) April 6, 2022

Ultimately, Adams decided to introduce a character whose one “flaw” was that he identifies as white — and that it would be unclear, both to readers and to fellow characters, whether he was serious, or whether he was simply mocking management.

“Dave” appeared this week for the first time, but was blocked by a major newspaper group, which refused to run the strip:

I just learned that a newspaper group won’t run my upcoming comic strip that introduces the first Black character (Dave) to the Dilbertverse.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) April 28, 2022

However, the objection to “Dave” was not that he was a racist character, but rather that he was transphobic. The comic strip itself did not mention transgender issues at all; the objection was that Dave seemed to make “identification” seem absurd.

Some of my critics have decided my new Dave character is about trans (it isn't.) Others criticize me for having only one Black character (this is the reason why). Still others question my relevance (while being unable to ignore me). Fun day! https://t.co/EY2QuBWnp8

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 2, 2022

Transgenderism involves choosing to identify with a gender that may be different from one’s biological sex — or, in fact, adopting multiple identities, based on shifting senses of self and sexuality.

Adams hinted Friday that he would, in fact, address transgender issued more directly in an upcoming comic strip, in which a familiar character, Wally the engineer, would claim falsely to be a “birthing person” to obtain greater benefits in the workplace and avoid having to do his job.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.