Matt Walsh, the star of Am I Racist?, disguised himself as a clumsy, sympathetic-to-the-cause catering waiter in order to infiltrate a “Race2Dinner” dinner party, with entertaining results. These dinners, organized by cynical, money-grubbing “anti-racism” consultant,” Saira Rao (skin color: brown), are struggle sessions for which guilt-ridden suburban women desperate to atone for their original sin—their “whiteness”—pay up to $5000 to don the hairshirt before Rao as she lectures them about what horrible racists they are and what they must do to fix themselves. The camera sets up the best laugh of this segment by catching her sidekick, Regina Jackson, instructing the penitents (who she knows nothing about other than their skin color) to “decolonize” themselves and do their own “white supremacy dismantling,” whatever that's supposed to mean. Walsh, hijacking the proceedings, then says to the group, “Raise your glasses if you're racist.” Most of the guests comply, including Jackson, who’s black. “Cheers,” she says before catching herself, lowering her glass, and correcting her blunder with, “Oh, I'm not a racist!” That declaration’s arguable.
When a self-serious, pedantic “educator” who condescends to her eager supplicants gets tripped up like this, it's funny. But not to the DEI true believers, who find the film offensive. How dare anyone mock their holy cause! Am I Racist, a product of conservative multimedia group, The Daily Wire, is a polarizing film that's just been released nationally in 1500 theaters, making it a groundbreaking cultural event for Republicans used to being able to find such subject matter only on a website. While there are reports that some showings have attracted only six viewers, the film's selling out in other venues, especially in areas not served by a Whole Foods. No major media outlets (outside of Variety so far) will even review the film, but its intended audience has no use for critics anyway.
Hollywood has no interest in catering to red-state sensibilities, leaving a gaping hole in the market that The Daily Wire and its podcaster, Walsh, are happy to exploit. Considering the mere $3 million production cost, the preliminary box office numbers for this mockumentary suggest we’ll be seeing more of this sort of aggressive, right-wing filmmaking. Sacha Baron Cohen, working from the left wing, has already succeeded at this with his Borat movies.
With the help of a ridiculous wig and skinny jeans, Walsh poses as a beta male on a “journey” towards DEI enlightenment. He claims he’s already received his official “DEI certification,” but is in search of much more. What he really wants, however—and he succeeds—is to get Saira Rao to say things like the U.S. is a “piece of shit” country that needs to be “burned down” and rebuilt. In fact, Rao’s hateful assessment of the nation is a reflection of the beliefs of a large swath of the influential far-left element of the Democratic Party.
While Bernie Sanders is far-left, he isn't a part of this radical group that includes members of The Squad like Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib. That contingent, to which many academics also belong, hates the U.S. and wants to destroy its infrastructure so they can impose their own socialist system. While there's plenty of room to criticize Trump's GOP, at least members of that party don't hate their own country.
The biggest trophy Walsh took home on his mission into the dark soul of the DEI movement was “whiteness studies” professor and author Robin DiAngelo, whose 2018 book, White Fragility, bowled over gullible white liberals who conflated her con-job approach to race relations with the sort of “constructive soul-searching” they favor on matters of identity. That DiAngelo, who’s white, has done things like charging the Tulsa City-County Library $15,000 for a zoom chat lasting 90 minutes apparently didn't ring any warning bells in these trusting souls that a new, race-baiting P.T. Barnum had arrived on the scene. That sum could've bought a lot of books, but DiAngelo’s above all a capitalist, a clear fact she'd vehemently deny.
DiAngelo charged $15,000 for the two-hour interview she granted to Matt Walsh, who posed as a friendly activist making a film about anti-racism and whiteness, but it was a sweatier payday than the easy bucks she's used to making. Walsh asked his producer Ben, who's black, to join them at the interview’s conclusion, and suggested she apologize to him for the white supremacist systems that oppress him. She complied without resistance, saying, “On behalf of myself and my fellow white people, I apologize—it is not you, it is us. As long as I’m standing, I will do my best to challenge it.”
Walsh then gave Ben some cash for “reparations,” asking DiAngelo if she'd also like to contribute. Ben told her he wouldn't “turn down cash”—one of the better lines in the film—and Walsh added in language she could understand that we “must allow ourselves to be uncomfortable.” A rattled DiAngelo then went to her purse and fetched $30 for him, perhaps justifying this in her mind as being the least she could do after ripping off these like-minded filmmakers like a gangster.
There's no reason for anyone to feel sorry for DiAngelo’s humiliation, as she's been scamming places like public libraries for years with her high-dollar grift exploiting the good intentions of clueless liberals. She's also faced accusations, recently, of plagiarizing passages from minority scholars in her doctoral thesis, according to a complaint obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
DiAngelo has issued a statement denouncing Am I Racist?, claiming the movie is “designed to humiliate and discredit anti-racist educators and activists, which is true when it comes to educators like her. She said she's donated her $15,000 fee to the NAACP Legal Defense Fee, but surely that was only after this film came out and damage control forced her hand. DiAngelo’s original intention was to bank that sum from a group of activists working to effect the changes she's been “working so hard” for, revealing her grift.
Saira Rao told Matt Walsh at her dinner party that all Republicans are “Nazis.” After Am I Racist? was released, she called the film a “fascist Nazi white supremacy film.” Rao also whined that she was conned into participating in the film. That's right, just like she’s conned all those naive suburban women with too much money and free time. So far, Rao, DiAngelo, and two other of the film’s targets have deleted their Twitter accounts. That's a good start. Not only is Am I Racist? funny, it's also making a contribution to society. Promoting the concept of collective guilt because of skin color is a mercenary activity benefiting only those getting paid for it.
