Penguin Random House Drops Scott Adams’ Book After Racist Rant

Portfolio, the business imprint of the world’s largest book publisher, Penguin Random House, will not publish Scott Adams’ book Reframe Your Brain, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, days after a racist rant by the “Dilbert” cartoon creator.

The publisher did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment, while Adams could not be reached.

On his YouTube channel last week, Adams called Black Americans a “hate group” and suggested white Americans “get the hell away from Black people” in response to a conservative organization’s poll purporting to show that many African Americans do not think it’s okay to be white.

In response, many U.S. newspapers dropped “Dilbert,” and the rant ignited a furor on social media.

Portfolio has published books by Adams before, including How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.

Meanwhile, billionaire Elon Musk, responding to newspapers dropping the cartoon, said the U.S. media was racist.

“For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians. Same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America,” Musk tweeted on Sunday.

“Maybe they can try not being racist.”

(Reporting by Reuters/Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)