Probing the Anti-Racism Racket
Two years ago, director Justin Folk and podcaster Matt Walsh collaborated on the documentary What Is a Woman? The whole thing was tongue-in-cheek: the premise was that Walsh, having been exposed to oodles of trans propaganda, was confused about the definition of woman and hence went about consulting a bunch of transgender “experts” in search of the answer. The result was an exposé of the whole abominable charade — the entire industry that seeks to convince young people that they were born in the wrong body and to plop them onto the assembly line of social transition, of hormone injections that go by the name of therapy, and of butchery that goes by the name of surgery. Somehow, the film managed to be at once horrifying and hilarious.
In their new documentary, Am I a Racist?, Folk and Walsh take much the same approach to the anti–racism racket, which claims that all white Americans are racist. The film isn’t anywhere near as horrifying as its predecessor — nothing here is as chilling as listening to highly credentialed men in drag calmly explaining the wisdom of mutilating children’s genitalia — but it’s still pretty damn riveting and, yes, funny.
This time around, Walsh, pretending that he’s conscience-stricken by endless claims in the media that all white men are racist, seeks to discover the truth about his own bigotry. Consequently he consults a series of people who have declared themselves to be “experts” in “anti-racism.”
Armed with a “DEI card” that he’s been awarded by from some quack mail-order institution that identifies him as a credentialed expert who’s equipped to fight racism, “white supremacism,” and “white entitlement,” Walsh spouts anti-racist dogma on a local Utah TV news show. Later, in an interview, Kate Slater, author of a book called The Anti-Racist Road Map, tells him that “America is racist to its bones” and that racism makes up “the fabric of our society.” Walsh also consults an employee of a Boulder, Colorado, bookstore that boasts an extensive section of anti-racism tomes as well as a selection of titles on the topic that have been recommended by staffers. Taking home a pile of these texts, he starts with Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility and Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist.
He then attends a workshop hosted by a black woman who, for the princely sum of $30,000 (throughout the film, these numbers pop up on the screen like jackpot amounts on a game show), works as a “grief expert and anti-racist instructor” — which means that she suckers an audience of well-off white people into confessing their own racism and paying for it. Later, Walsh doles out no less than $2,350 to Regan Byrd, an “anti-oppression instructor,” for a private session.
He then turns the tables around, stopping ordinary people on the street, brandishing his “DEI card” and offering to use his expertise to help “decenter” their “whiteness” and overcome their racial bigotry. One of three goofily clad but likable-looking young guys actually comes back with an excellent bit of common sense: As he puts it, he’s white, he’s not racist, and he disapproves of talking endlessly about race. “I feel,” he tells Walsh, “like you’re the most racist person I’ve ever talked to.”
Resuming the role of student, Walsh talks to the “founder of Phoenix Black Lives Matter” who has a Ph.D. in “sustainability” and who, for a mere $1,500, offers to help him “decolonize” himself. “The only thing about white culture,” she explains, “is buying things and stealing things.” She even compares white Americans to Nazi doctors.
Then Walsh comes up with a keen stratagem. Standing near the Washington Monument, he asks passersby to sign a petition to rename it the George Floyd Monument (and paint it black) — and, alas, collects a depressing number of signatures from cowed honkies, one of whom calls it “a beautiful idea.”
That’s not all. After seeing Dr. Phil on TV interviewing two women, one white and one black, who hold elegant dinners at which — for a price of $5,000 a head — they offer rich white women the privilege of being accused of racism, Walsh gets himself hired as a waiter at one of these shindigs, where he hears the white host declare that “Republicans are Nazis,” that “the entire system has to burn,” and that America “is not worth saving” because it’s “a piece of shit.”
Later he drops into a shabby little Southern biker bar to ask the working-class white customers if they’ve “confronted their whiteness.” His interlocutors turn out to be as indifferent to race as those fancy dinner guests are obsessed with it. “Why does race have to be thrown into everything?” one of them asks Walsh, who replies: “You’re white.” The guy grunts: “So? Who cares? … I got black friends. I love them too.” Another customer agrees: “I have more black friends … than I have white friends.” A third admits that his father, back in the day, was a Klansmen, but that times have changed radically: “I accept people as they are…. You wanna do away with racism? Quit labeling people as black and white.”
What about working-class blacks? Seeking out a few of them, Walsh discovers that they don’t care about color, either. Is America racist? No, they say. “America is a beautiful country,” one of them maintains. When Walsh references his own whiteness, an older black man laughs amiably and says, “If I cut you, you would bleed just like me.” He adds: “We got to love each other. That’s how you get past racism.”
Those working-class whites and blacks apparently didn’t charge Walsh for their interviews. But it costs him no less than $15,000 to secure a few minutes on camera with the sainted Robin DiAngelo, arguably the doyenne of this entire anti-racism movement. In one of the film’s funnier moments, Walsh seduces her into a role-playing bit in which he pretends to be black and accuses her first of smiling too much at him (whites smiling too much at blacks in order to show they’re not racist is, apparently, a serious offense) and then of not smiling at him at all (which is also offensive). Brilliantly, he suggests that she pay reparations to his black producer. She’s obviously uneasy about this proposal — after all, she’s not in this game to shell out cash but to rake it in — but she ends up forking over 30 bucks, which, as the film notes, brings the cost of the interview down to $14,970.
There’s more, but you get the idea. At the end of What Is a Woman?, Walsh’s pretend confusion ends when, after all his encounters with trans propagandists, he goes home to his wife, who spells out the basic facts of biology in a simple sentence or two. At the end of this film, Walsh’s faux epiphany emerges on its own: “Am I making the world better,” he ponders, “or am I just profiting off of people’s racial guilt?”
As with What Is a Woman?, one fears that this highly engaging documentary will mainly attract the attention of the already converted. If people who’ve been taken in by the anti-racism shakedown somehow find themselves watching this picture, though, I suspect the huge sums charged by these con artists will turn a few heads. What’s more, Walsh does a very effective job of demonstrating that the current preoccupation with racism is largely the province of ridiculously privileged and idle white women who, for whatever reason, get a perverse kick out of being labeled as bigots, whereas ordinary, hard-working Americans of every race, by and large, are sincerely indifferent to skin color — buying, quite sincerely, into Martin Luther King Jr.’s argument for colorblindedness. Few conservatives, I suspect, will be surprised by anything in Am I a Racist?, but for any people on the left who can be cajoled into viewing it, it will likely be an eye-opener.
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