‘Am I Racist?’ Exposes The Grift Of The Anti-Racist Industry

In “The Art of War,” Sun Tzu wrote, “To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.” In “Am I Racist?,” the satirical documentary released by the Daily Wire that’s in theaters now, writer and star Matt Walsh leans into that concept with gusto, doing the work necessary to become an anti-racist. Fortunately for him, the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) experts he lampoons don’t have the same level of dedication to studying their purported enemies.

Walsh earns a certification in DEI, he visits a bookstore to pick up plagiarist Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility,” he goes to a workshop examining how to dismantle systemic racism, and he disrupts the opening meditation session at that workshop. Somehow, no one initially recognizes him nor realizes he’s mocking them, though the microaggressions he commits lead to him being found out by the other workshop attendees. Rather than allowing him to do the work after that discovery — and surely, they see that he is someone who needs to do the work — he gets escorted out. They also call the police on him.

This macroaggression means that Walsh has but one choice for his project — he must go undercover a la Eddie Murphy. The subterfuge allows him to truly start doing the work. He learns that whiteness is insidious, all Republicans are Nazis, and white women are the worst. Through his efforts, viewers also learn those things and more, such as the fact that you should never hire him to be a server at your dinner party about how white women are the worst. When it comes to learning how to clear dishes, Walsh still has work to do.

We also learn that there’s a lot of money in teaching white people to be anti-racist, even if its teachers approaching their lessons as living buzzword clouds, verbally assaulting their students about decentering their whiteness, decolonizing themselves, and not “tone policing” people of color. We see bikers refuse to do those things even as they denounce racism, not least of which because they’re normal people for whom phrases like “decentering whiteness” and “decolonizing themselves” are obvious nonsense. Black people Walsh talks to are just as bad as the bikers at accepting such concepts.

Meeting DiAngelo

Not that all his results are so grim. When he mansplains “mansplaining” to DiAngelo in their face-to-face meeting, for example, she accepts his more enlightened definition. She is also much better at being an anti-racist than the normal people he attempts to educate, though she seems unenthused about joining Walsh in offering a black man some cash as a personal act of offering reparations. It’s not that she can’t afford it. Walsh pays her $15,000 for their one-on-one session, a stack of cash that undoubtedly encourages her to be a thorough anti-racist.

She does educate Walsh in turn, though. After their meeting, he realizes that there’s a lot of money in being an anti-racist — DiAngelo’s impressive earnings are but a drop in the bucket — and it would be foolish for him not to get a little bit for himself. His Do the Work Workshop, however, is not the financial boon for him it is for others, earning him only a few thousand dollars.

Perhaps it’s because his methodology involves less catered food and wine and more self-flagellation. If it all sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is. Perceptions about race relations in the United States have been trending downward. It’s almost as if the huge push to focus on race over the past decade has had an opposite effect than the one intended.

Things Aren’t So Bad

This is the beauty of “Am I Racist?” It hilariously skewers the anti-racism industry as the destructive grift that it is, one that enables its high priests and priestesses to earn lavish amounts of money for lecturing white people about how awful they are. It shows that most people are not of the faculty lounge or corporate diversity training milieu, blathering on about systemic racism and land acknowledgements. The men and women on the street Walsh talks to, regardless of skin color, rarely agree with his pronouncements. Many openly argue with him. The huge chasm between real people and the charlatans who seek to profit off dividing us is exposed, all with humor and verve.

“Am I Racist?” is a stunning reminder that offline and out in the real world, things aren’t so bad, even if our perceptions have been skewed. It also reminds us that the fight to turn America into a country wholly focused on cosmetic differences is one that the sane can easily win. For as Sun Tzu also said, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

The anti-racist industry may have won a few battles, but as its leaders and soldiers do not know the enemy, even one as prominent as Walsh, every victory they achieve will lead to defeats, and soon they will be wholly vanquished.

Richard Cromwell is a writer and senior contributor at The Federalist. He lives in Northwest Arkansas with his wife, three daughters, and two crazy dogs. Co-host of the podcast Coffee & Cochon, you can find him on Facebook and Twitter, though you should probably avoid using social media.