Dilbert creator Scott Adams
Dilbert creator Scott Adams
"Dilbert" creator Scott Adams is under fire for claiming that his show was canceled because of his race.

The cartoon, which ran on UPN from 1999 to 2000, was based on a comic strip by the same name and featured a pessimistic office worker as the title character.

"I lost my TV show for being white when UPN decided it would focus on an African-American audience," Adams wrote on Twitter. "That was the third job I lost for being white. The other two in corporate America. (They told me directly.)"

He's not the only TV figure injecting race into the social-media conversation.

This weekend, a 2017 tweet from the Hollywood Reporter widely recirculated about Lena Dunham selling her hit show Girls to HBO at age 23 with a page-and-a-half pitch "without a character nor a plot." Many in the entertainment industry, particularly people of color, used this tweet to show how Dunham benefitted from privilege that they didn't have to succeed.

"I have a masters degree in film and teach film at a top tier university, an over twenty five year professional career and I walk into pitches with a fully realized bible pilot and seven season arc, and often times told it's not enough. But Lena Dunham, cool," wrote actor Ahmed Best, who is black.

Adams directly replied to Best's tweet with his claims about UPN.

Twitter users were quick to call Adams out for his claims. "It's illegal to fire someone for their race, even if they're white. So. No one believes that multiple jobs told you that you didn't get the job because you were white," wrote Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist behind the New York Times' 1619 Project about slavery.

Adams doubled down on his claims. "I wasn't fired. I was told I couldn't be promoted because of my color and gender, so I left, of course," he posted. "I invite anyone who had the same experience in corporate America to say so in the comments. Red Pill coming. Open wide," he said in a reference to the Matrix.

Twitter user @letsgoayo responded, "Here's the thing, Scott: we don't believe you. Here's another thing, Scott: black people read the newspaper. Black people liked Dilbert. Black people didn't try to take anything from you, we had always been among your audience. Until you became openly racist."

According to the Wrap, UPN stopped airing shows in 2006.

"After UPN ended, black TV shows largely disappeared for at least a decade. During that time, almost all networks' time slots remained filled with white shows . . . just not yours," said wrote Akilah Green, who writes for A Black Lady Sketch Show and Perfect Harmony.

Others pointed out Adams' hypocrisy by quoting a segment from the "Dilbert" Wikipedia page, which cites the creator claiming network issues led to the demise of the show, not his race.