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Matt Walsh Exposes ‘Anti-Racist’ Grift Industry in Film ‘Am I a Racist?’
Conservative commentator Matt Walsh’s movie “Am I a Racist” is a hybrid of mockumentary in the tradition of “Spinal Tap” and his signature ironic take on the inanities of our age.
Walsh’s message in “Am I a Racist?” is simple: Although racism in America is a faint ghost of its historic self – as Professor Wilfred Reilly told Walsh, the demand for racism in America today greatly exceeds the supply – an industry of consultants make a living by pretending otherwise and stirring up interracial animosity.
This leads some white people to feel bad for things they generally haven’t done. And it leads some blacks and other racial minorities to feel aggrieved for things they generally haven’t experienced.
“Am I a Racist?” is a production of Walsh’s employer, The Daily Wire, an expanding media company built on the popular news and commentary of Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, Walsh, and others.
The Daily Wire team also has produced television shows and films, including the comedy “Lady Ballers”and Walsh’s first documentary “What Is a Woman?” Both films take on, and take apart, gender ideology.
America’s race-industrial complex of workshops, training, and group atonement has been there for decades, but went supernova after the May 2020 death of George Floyd, a black man, in police custody.
Since then, assisted by COVID-19 shut-ins, urban riots, and corporate virtue-signaling on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, most American media, politicians, and companies never shut up about race.
The new film, directed and co-written by Justin Folk, documents Walsh’s journey—in which he is lightly disguised with a wig and tweed jacket—into the profitable world of professional DEI consulting. (Walsh is also a co-writer, along with Brian A. Hoffman and Dallas Sonnier.)
The “anti-racism” industry arguably has improved the lives of no one but those it has enriched as practitioners.
Few have done better than Robin DiAngelo, author of the bestseller “White Fragility” and a highly paid consultant to many large companies, and Ibram X. Kendi, a lightweight academic who got his own Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University with $55 million to spend.
What has Kendi done with the money? If this “Research” page on his website is anything to go by, not much. Controversy about his center’s leadership, product, and spending have led to lower funding, so Kendi recently had to fire half the staff.
Any criticism of Kendi, DiAngelo, or the industry they represent inevitably attracts accusations of racism from the media. Yet Walsh leads with one of Kendi’s quotes: “The only remedy for past discrimination is present discrimination.” Because Walsh doesn’t care.
The previous generation of conservative pundits were often persuasive on policy, but a bit angry. What makes Walsh so refreshing, along with his Daily Wire stablemates, is that this generation of conservative media personalities is funny, sarcastic, and at ease with the racial diversity of America.
Many laugh-out-loud moments occur in “Am I a Racist?” I won’t spoil them, but a common theme is the chagrin of pathologically self-critical white liberals when their attempts to atone for their imagined sins fall short.
The film’s participants—including DiAngelo, Race2Dinner hosts Saira Rao and Regina Jackson, and “anti-racist scholar” Kate Slater—unwittingly make Walsh’s point for him.
These self-described scholars and teachers get rich by charging white people money to tell them how racist they are. Yet they seem to have few facts to back up their apocalyptic descriptions of America as a systemically racist, Nazi hellhole that must be burned down.
DiAngelo takes $15,000 from Walsh’s fictitious film company. Rao and Jackson reportedly charge $5,000 to come to dinner with a group of white women, whom they berate at length. The women seem to enjoy it, which is another theme of the film and bizarre pathology of our era.
Walsh also pays Sarra Tekola, Ph.D., $1,500 for a lesson in which she teaches him that the only thing “white” culture amounts to is selling stuff and stealing stuff.
At the end of his tongue-in-cheek, “anti-racist” journey, Walsh’s conclusion is that the industry is a giant scam. His advice to Americans: Ignore the race grifters.
White people need to stop apologizing and paying to be criticized by people for whom solving alleged “systemic racism” will mean losing their jobs. Black people need to take advantage of America—the best environment in human history for personal flourishing, one which has created the wealthiest population of African descent in the world.
“Am I a Racist?” reaches nearly the same conclusion as “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life” more than 40 years ago. As actor-comedian Michael Palin said in that movie: “Try to be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with all creeds and nations.”
Have things really changed since 1983? Well, it turned out that low-fat diets aren’t that good. And today, Palin never would get away with reading that bit in drag. But other than that, the sound advice of both films has been valid for millennia: Treat others as you would have them treat you.
The radical Left lacks a sense of humor, tolerance of opposing views, and the ability to laugh at themselves, so few of the scolds who Walsh lampoons in this film are likely to watch it.
But it’s their loss. “Am I a Racist?” is an amusing take on what one can only hope will be the peaking wave of a time of madness in our country.
Go see it.
The post Matt Walsh Exposes ‘Anti-Racist’ Grift Industry in Film ‘Am I a Racist?’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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