Am I Racist? 2024 Movie Review
“Am I racist?” It’s a question we’ve all been forced to grapple with in recent years — whether we want to or not. George Floyd died in the summer of 2020, and suddenly, race became the defining feature in all our lives. Our leaders promised a “racial reckoning,” offering “restorative justice” for “marginalized identities” and an end to “systems of oppression.” Our bosses splurged on “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” consultants who taught us how to “do the work” to root our own “inherent bias” and “microaggressions.” In unison, all voices of authority told us we must “abolish whiteness.”
If you’re a normal person, you’re left thinking: wait… what? While the vague buzzwords all sound strange, you come away with a newfound uneasiness about society and your place within it. Moral frenzies like this don’t just spontaneously erupt; the whole country can’t just lie with such gusto. These “anti-racists” must have a point, some real grievance to which I am complicit. But what is it? This is what the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh set out to uncover in his new documentary film “Am I Racist?”
The film tracks Walsh’s own journey into the belly of the beast. He starts off with a spirit of earnest inquiry, perusing anti-racist literature and attending lectures on his privilege. But the pupil soon becomes the master. Walsh dons a man-bun and goes undercover as Stephen, a “certified” DEI expert who berates the common man and hobnobs with the most prominent racial hucksters of our day.
“I’ll believe whatever I’m told . . . That way we’ll let the people that we’re talking to kind of guide me, tell me where to go next,” Walsh explained of his transformation into Stephen.
The film echoes a conservative-Borat, with some laugh-out-loud moments as Stephen engages DEI ideology with deadpan seriousness. The ladies of “Race to Dinner” can’t decide whether to be amused, enraged or flattered that a bumbling waiter so eagerly wants to join their very expensive struggle session. The feted anti-racist author Robin DiAngelo sits in uncomfortable awe as she gets outmaneuvered in her own game. But the film’s comedic essence serves to make a more serious point.
“Another reason we approached the movie the way that we did,” Walsh explained, “was to put [DEI professionals] in an environment where they felt comfortable to just say what they actually think and do what they would actually do. We knew that if I sit there and really challenge them and say ‘Hey, I don’t agree’ . . . they immediately shut down.”
Walsh’s great accomplishment is just how much he gets them to open up. All it took was some flattery and mild slight of hand.
Presumably, the folks Walsh sat down with could have easily uncovered his true identity with the slightest digging. But “a bit of incompetence” and “a lot of narcissism” goes a long way; be what they want you to be — a self-hating white man who comes to them for sage wisdom — and they quickly drop the “sanitized version of their ideology.”
Each “expert” Stephen sits down with is more inarticulate than the last. Despite their credentials, they don’t sound very smart at all. They jump from academic buzzword to buzzword, but it’s clear how much resentment they harbor. It’s all about them: their cultural preferences, their personal interests, rectifying their self-proclaimed trauma. One laughed as she twisted the knife: if Walsh’s daughter only likes to dress up as white Disney princesses, he raised her to be racist; if he buys her a Moana dress, that’s cultural appropriation — racist!
You can’t win, and that’s the point. All the new found power and wealth of the diversity industrial complex exists only as long as they keep you treading back and forth along an impossibly thin tight rope.
The truth is, there is no good will to be found: these people hate normal Americans almost as much as they love lining their own pockets. As Walsh put it, they “want to keep you in this vortex of resentment and shame and guilt and suspicion” so that you forget the very idea of normalcy. And having institutionalized this “vortex” in many halls of power, they’ve succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
But the film also shows how this power can easily turn into a weakness. Stephen speaks with “normal” people from all walks of life about what they’re doing to “de-center” their “whiteness,” but outside the confines of government mandates or the HR office, they have the common sense to tell him where to shove it. Not only does the everyman come off more insightful, articulate and enlightened on race than the professional “thinkers,” but they have an instinctive understanding of what used to be the normal cultural position: just stop thinking about race and treat everyone how you want to be treated!
The film makes it clear that the cult of DEI only wins converts through moral coercion and manipulation. Examined plainly on its own terms, DEI ideology is nothing short of poisonous insanity. And no, you’re not a racist; you’re just a well-meaning, regular joe who fell for a scam.
This leaves Walsh on an optimistic note. “We could be reaching the peak of the latest form of this phenomenon,” he told me. He thinks for most people, the letters DEI “will have a negative connotation” — and that’s a good sign the country is finally starting to heal after the summer of 2020.
So go see “Am I Racist?” when it debuts in theaters next week. More importantly, take your sister who thinks she needs to do more to be an ally, your cousin who trips over himself to sound politically correct, and your friends who feel guilty over the color of their skin. Let them realize that enough will never be enough, and that it’s perfectly fine — normal, even — to just stop trying.
