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.

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.

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:

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:

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.

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.