"Overlaughing" at Matt Walsh’s New Film
In the room the women come and go, talking of Robin DiAngelo.
As long as I have been politically aware, there has been a constant effort on the part of the left to both politicize and racialize everything in American life.
For instance, we are told that everything from the concept of time to garage pull ropes are actually racist. The purest expression of the obsession of the contemporary post-Marxist left with race and other forms of identity was given by feminist blogger Anita Sarkeesian in her infamous “everything is sexist, everything is racist, everything is homophobic” comments in 2015.
In the aftermath of the summer of 2020, this racialization of American life has accelerated significantly, to deleterious effect within society. For instance, during COVID, various treatments were rationed based on skin color, with Minnesota and Utah treating minority status as equivalent to diabetes in senior citizens and chronic pulmonary disease.
While these cases are unfortunate, many of the left’s claims are laughable. Now, Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh has gone out of his way to give us something to laugh at, skewering the contemporary racialist fads and their absurdities in his new documentary, Am I Racist?, which is currently in theaters.
The documentary follows Walsh as he dresses up (in a bad wig) as an aspiring “anti-racist activist,” attempting to “do the work” (i.e., learn how to be a left-wing radical). Throughout the film, Walsh manages to interact with various academics, lecturers, and activists, using his interactions to expose their racialist policies (often disguised as “anti-racism”).
In one particular scene, Walsh convinces a number of white liberals to sign a petition to rename the George Washington monument after George Floyd. He even goes onto multiple left-wing news stations to teach the television hosts how to “stretch out of their whiteness.” In another example, Walsh infiltrates, as a waiter, the lavish “Race to Dinner” program, where white women will pay $2,500 to be told that they are racist, where he records the participants and hosts making a number of outrageous statements, and gets them to all raise a hand to say that they are racists.
The funniest part of Walsh’s documentary is his incognito interview with Robin DiAngelo, the author of White Fragility and a noteworthy academic of the left. Walsh managed to trick DiAngelo into thinking that he was an admiring fan trying to learn about “antiracism” from her (for the price of $15,000).
DiAngelo, who happens to be white, has made a fortune off selling books telling other whites how they are evil and corrupted by their whiteness. DiAngelo’s work includes discussion of absurd concepts such as “oversmiling,” where a white person smiles too much at a minority in a public space, as to conceal racism.
Of course, the whole concept of oversmiling is bogus and says more about DiAngelo than society. Walsh, in a few hypothetical questions, manages to visibility confuse DiAngelo as she finds it impossible to avoid a situation where she does not consciously smile or frown at someone else owing to their skin color.
Turning to the subject of reparations, Walsh pulls out his wallet to give money to his producer (who happens to be African-American). After doing so, Walsh is able to guilt DiAngelo into doing likewise, and she ends up getting up to take out her wallet and from which she takes $30 (remember, she is a very wealthy woman and it is nothing for her) and gives it to Walsh’s producer as “reparations.” At that moment, the whole movie theater erupted in laughter, and that scene would have made the film worth it on its own.
After the DiAngelo interview, Walsh hosts an “anti-racism” training of his own, where he asks the participants to do increasingly absurd things, culminating in him getting a some of them to take self-flagellation whips that he hands out (though many of the participants leave at that point).
However, the two weakest points of the film are the beginning and end, as the film does not follow the regular structure of a movie. This is unavoidable given the unorthodox structure of the film where Walsh slips into and out of character and is more than made up for by the content of the film.
Beyond this, it was slightly odd to watch a documentary in a movie theater, and many of the advantages of watching a film in a theater with regard to sound and lighting are lost on the audience because of this (though on this point, it did not help that the theater forgot to turn off the overhead lights until 45 minutes into the screening).
All things considered, in order to push back against racialism, it is helpful to show how absurd the left is, and Matt Walsh’s Am I Racist? does this exceptionally well.
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America was systemically racist against Blacks up through the early 70s. Until the civil rights movement, blacks were subject to a racist caste system in employment, they were segregated into ghettos, and mainstream white culture was openly disdainful towards them. This only changed within living memory. Its obvious that there are long term social consequences attributable to this past history that haven't just magically gone away, and wouldn't go away even if everyone stopped holding racial animus. However, how much actual, direct racial animus still exists is an open question. I tend to think that liberals over estimate this, hence the moral panic represented by people DiAngelo, but then again, its easy for me to have this opinion as a white guy.
The problem with Walsh is that he ignores all the pre-1970 history and the existence of impoverished black ghettos in every major city, which is traceable to that pre-1970 history. He focuses on the fact that there less racial animus now and ignores the big picture. He also ignores that, while they are a more of a fringe faction, there are still explicitly racist/white supremacists in US politics and by going after the "racial justice" left he might also be giving fuel to these extreme viewpoints. I think some conservatives start with mainstream anti-DEI stuff and then get into IQ/eugenics territory. I doubt that Walsh will follow up this movie with another one where he makes fun of right-wing racialists like Jared Taylor or Steve Sailer.