AM I RACIST?
Since the tumult of 2020, the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) movement has grown to ostensibly address issues like systemic racism. Anti-racism is embraced at the highest levels of academia, politics, even religion. Some, however, see all this as in turns a scam and a way to promote division rather than inclusion. Conservate commentator Matt Walsh looks on the DEI movement in Am I Racist? where he both mocks the champions of the anti-racist movement and allows them to mock themselves, albeit unwittingly.
In his faux-serious manner, Walsh ponders on whether he is a racist given how almost everything nowadays is seen through the prism of race. He starts by attending a workshop headed by Breeshia Wade, author of Grieving While Black. The cost is $30,000, though whether the cost is Ms. Wade's fee or the cost of the session is unclear. Seeing some of the session, Walsh is discovered to not be "Steve" and is asked to leave.
Sensing that he needs a disguise to enter spaces he would not be welcomed in, Walsh dons a disguise consisting of a bad wig and skinny jeans. Surprisingly, this faux-hipster look manages to hoodwink all sorts of DEI and anti-racist experts and activists. He takes a one-on-one lesson with anti-oppression consultant Regan Byrd (at $2,500). He gets insight from Dr. Sarra Takola (a bargain at $1,500), who sparked "conversations about race" when she had a verbal altercation with two white male Arizona State students for making her and others "feel unsafe". Walsh even throws in Jodi Brown, the relative of two black girls whose family sued Sesame Street for racial discrimination after the costumed character of Rosita did not high-five the children. The price for her brief appearance? $50,000.
As a side note, Ms. Brown did not know the race of the person who played Rosita. Also, her appearance in Am I Racist? which was less than five minutes if that, is more than my annual salary.
Walsh continues his journey in character. We look in at a Race2Dinner soiree ($5,000) where white women are wined and dined and told how racist they are. He mockingly campaigns in front of the Washington Monument to have passersby sign a petition to rename it the George Floyd Monument (and manages to get signatures). He reenacts the attack Jussie Smollett claimed to have survived. He eventually creates his own faux-anti-racist workshop, Do the Work (a common phrase in the DEI movement), where he manages to get people to curse out his alleged uncle who appears infirm and some of whose participants, albeit looking slightly confused, come close to agreeing to self-flagellation.
Inserted are brief conversations with ordinary people both black and white who have a simple message: love each other, noting how we all bleed the same. What conclusions will Walsh reach at the end of his merry romp through DEI and anti-racism?
Ben, though he's obviously in on the gag, takes the cash. DiAngelo, looking befuddled and stating that she thought the whole thing was weird, eventually states that she too can go get cash. We then see her go to her purse and present Ben with $30 (knocking her fee down to $14,970). That ought to make up for those 400 years of oppression.
DiAngelo can make the case that she was duped. I do not begrudge her that, in a sense, she was pressured by expectations to "do the work" no matter how bizarre. However, she ultimately agreed to give a random stranger money and make such a generous gesture based on the recipient's race. I doubt she would have given Walsh or his Daily Wire cohort Ben Shapiro money. I'm not even sure that I, someone of Mexican descent, would get DiAngelo to open up her wallet.
Ultimately, she was responsible for her own foolishness. No one physically forced or threatened her to do such a bonkers thing.
Am I Racist? has a major flaw, and that is Matt Walsh himself. He cannot help himself in attempting to force audiences to think he is funny. The situations and answers that the various experts give are funny in their nonsensical manner. One of the "rename the George Washington Monument to George Floyd Monument" signers literally shakes Ben's hands and apologizes to him.
Walsh could have let the speakers and situations speak for themselves, letting the gobbledygook and oddity of some of their actions show them for the fools and charlatans Walsh holds them as. However, Walsh simply could not resist making himself the center of attention. A case in point is the Race2Dinner scene. Disguised as a masked waiter (as Race2Dinner is segregated by race and gender in the spirit of diversity), he overhears hostesses Regina Jackson and Saria Rao hold court and express such views as how Republicans are Nazis and "this country is a piece of s**t".
It is hard to know whether the crashing dishes from Walsh are out of genuine shock at overhearing this, perhaps anger, or calculated for a more "comedic" punctuation mark to Rao's words of healing. Later on, while still masked and in his fright wig, he essentially crashes the dinner, inserting himself into the conversation.
Walsh clearly believes himself to be funny. He ends up coming across as slightly smug and obnoxious. This is clear at the Wade seminar, where he constantly interrupts to present these faux messages of solidarity and almost openly antagonistic in his fake sincerity. I found Wade and the participants to be civil in how they dealt with "Steve". Granted, calling the police on him was over-the-top, but on the whole, it is Walsh, not the seminar attendees or Wade, who looked bad.
I also think it was a mistake for him to carry on the fake disguise when talking to ordinary people. He did not come across as funny and worse, insincere. The best section in Am I Racist? is when he talks to a repairman from British Guiana named Milton. This quiet, unassuming man loves America and has never seen the overwhelming racism the press and anti-racist activists insist that he endures. Infinitely patient with Walsh's schtick, he merely laughs softly when told about DiAngelo's book and ideas. He does not have time or interest in them. The only book Milton reads, he tells us, is the Bible, even offering Walsh one of the Bibles that Milton keeps in his car. In a brief conversation, three black women talk about how they grew up with white people and saw themselves as being one community.
Some of the scenes in Am I Racist? are so bizarre that one cannot believe that everyone involved are not actors doing parody. The participants at the Wade seminar. The white woman excoriated at the Race2Dinner for "tone policing" her black husband when she asks him to not be so loud. The barely intelligible man at the biker bar; those who managed to sit through Walsh's fake Do the Work seminar (the film shows some leaving in disgust or out of a belief that it was all idiotic). I do not think it is faked. I do think it looks like something out of Impractical Jokers except that they look to all be in on the act. They aren't, as Hate Crime Hoax author Wilfred Reilly (who would probably be more on Walsh's side) is similarly hoodwinked and befuddled by the hipster persona Walsh presents him with. That these are real people who think the Washington Monument should be renamed in honor of George Floyd is astonishing.
Walsh does better when showing us the literal high cost of these struggle sessions. How Ms. Brown can justify making $50,000 for sharing her story on how a person in a Muppet outfit inflicted racial pain on her family would be interesting to hear. Seeing the massive amounts of cash made out of DEI instructions and seminars show it to be less about racial reconciliation and more about financial benefits. His summation on how neither side should be condemned to bear either white guilt and black victimhood is good.
Both the white bikers and the black women in Am I Racist? made almost similar statements on how both would bleed the same color if cut. Love one another is how they see things. That wisdom from average people is greater and deeper than the various anti-racist and DEI activists who rake in millions to keep racial divides open. Am I Racist? would be better to take a more serious look at how these activists can be utterly nonsensical. We can have endless conversations about race, but all that talking has apparently not helped make things better.
Am I Racist? has good moments of humor through people's foolishness, but a little more focus on the people and less on Matt Walsh would make it a better project.
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