Am I Racist?—Matt Walsh Doing the Work

If your public rhetoric is different from what you say in private (and the way you say it), you will likely be embarrassed if anyone points out the contrast. Such should now be the case for the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) industry. When addressing the media, they present their programs as a way widen opportunities for all Americans. However, in their [high-priced] workshops, they proclaim America is an inherently racist nation that is beyond redemption. Somehow, starboard gadfly Matt Walsh was there to record it, posing as an apprentice DEI activist in the documentary Am I Racist?, directed by Justin Folk, which opens today in theaters.

Considering the vast resources devoted to DEI and “anti-racist” organizations in recent years, how could it possibly be that race relations are worse now than they were twenty or thirty years ago? This is the question Walsh (celebrated/notorious for What is a Woman) sets out to investigate in his gonzo, Borat-like style, going undercover in the seminars, “doing the work” of antiracism. Rightly, Walsh keys in on the cringy vacuousness of that hollow phrase as a symbol of the movement.

Frankly, some of those workshops more resemble Maoist struggle sessions than anything remotely educational. However, they are highly profitable. Walsh literally has the receipts to prove it. Some of the rhetoric is also highly “problematic,” as the practitioners themselves might say.

For instance, Saira Rao, co-host of the “Race2Dinner” dinner parties (at $2,500 a plate) literally says: “The entire system has to burn. This country is not worth saving. This country is a piece of sh*t.” That is a direct quote. Nothing is taken out of context. (It is also worth noting Rao and her co-host Regina Jackson were dropped by the agents because of rhetoric deemed anti-Semitic, like the claim “Zionist” doctors deliberately give sub-standard care to black and Muslim patients.)

On the other hand, it should also be acknowledged Walsh often acts like a disruptive jerkweed. Having talked his way into the catering crew for one of their parties, Walsh breaks more plates than Zorba the Greek at a wedding reception. Frankly, some scenes would work better if Walsh just let the “DEI” hucksters hang themselves with their own extremist discourse.

Still, there are two or three scenes that are both jaw-droppingly revealing and mind-blowingly funny. Lucky Robin DiAngelo, the (white) guru of the “anti-racist” industry, gets to be the centerpiece of the film. After she explains how white people can only choose to be “more or less racist” in any given moment, Walsh challenges her to join him in giving a cash reparation to his black producer. Her reaction is priceless and it will dog her for the rest of her career—deservedly so.

In contrast, skeptical political scientist Wilfred Reilly (who happens to be black) keeps his cool while Walsh interviews him while maintaining his dull-witted DEI SJW persona. It does not look like Reilly is “in” on the joke, even though his scholarship is inline with the film’s general perspective. Consequently, he is even more persuasive demolishing specious hate crime statistics (exemplified by the Jussie Smollett hoax).

The laughs in Am I Racist are inconsistent, but when they hit, they slay. Sometimes Walsh does his own film a disservice with his excesses in ways ironically similar to his antithesis, Michael Moore, but the self-styled anti-racists are always their own worst enemies. No matter how you feel about Walsh, or the producer-distributor Daily Wire, this film puts several nails in the coffins of the race-baiters’ public credibility. Frankly, society needs more documentaries like this, which challenge groupthink. Recommended for its brutal honesty and some richly subversive humor, Am I Racist opens today (9/13) in theaters, including the AMC Empire in New York.