Ridicule for its own Sake: Matt Walsh Film Fails to Explore how to Help Race Relations While Sidestepping Wokeness
DIRECTED BY JUSTIN FOLK/2024
In his new faux documentary, political activist Matt Walsh presents himself as an average Joe who just wants us all to accept others as they are.
The Justin Folk-directed Am I Racist? premiered Sept 13 and ranked fourth during its opening weekend, pulling in nearly $5 million. It passed the $11 million mark on its third weekend (Sept. 27 to Sept. 29), making it the top-grossing documentary so far in 2024. These are really good numbers for the latest movie released by The Daily Wire, a conservative media organization that hosts Walsh’s podcast; the film project had a $3 million budget.
Walsh’s goal is to expose the contradictions and irrational aspects of anti-racism ideology. Concealing his true identity, he promotes himself as a certified diversity, equity and inclusion expert. Walsh earns this title by taking a DEI training course, giving his phony character the credentials he needs to fit in with the anti-racist crowd.
And he accomplishes his goal. Walsh captures several anti-racist advocates either making ridiculous comments or engaging in foolish behavior while trying to prove how anti-racist they are.
It’s obvious that Walsh doesn’t agree with this leftist ideology. He rejects the notion that the United States is inherently racist, requiring white people to confront their whiteness. He seems to believe that we just need to accept each other no matter what the color of our skin happens to be.
This would be a welcoming message from Walsh if I thought he was being sincere. But the problem is that he’s not someone who accepts others as they are in all circumstances.
He doesn’t accept people who live contrary to his interpretation of the Christian scriptures, raising questions about the “live and let live” image he projects in his movie. Members of the LGBTQ community serve as a frequent target of his contempt.
Walsh also demonstrates an appalling lack of concern about the devastating effects of racism in our country. Early in his film, he offers this:
“Growing up in the ’90s, I never thought much about race. Sure, you noticed. But it never seemed to matter much, at least not to me.”
It’s wonderful that Walsh grew up so post-racial that he hardly noticed people’s race in his youth. But if you examine events around the country during the 1980s and 1990s, it’s obvious that many people didn’t share his supposed enlightened view of race.
News reports chronicled the violence directed at racial minorities by members of the skinhead movement during this period. Likewise, neo-Nazi groups experienced a resurgence.
White supremacy ideology strongly influenced Timothy McVeigh, who murdered 168 people after blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Shawn Berry, Lawrence Brewer and John King murdered James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, Texas, in 1998 by dragging him along a roadway behind a truck, simply because Byrd was a Black man.
Walsh can afford his indifference to race and how it put many at a disadvantage in his youth. He’s not Black, so he wasn’t at risk of being subjected to harassment and violence from white supremacists.
Despite his alleged color-blind stance, Walsh has courted controversy when it comes to race.
He raised questions two years ago about the Disney corporation’s choice of Halle Bailey, a black actress, to play the lead in its live-action television production of The Little Mermaid. Many people strongly opposed this because in the original animated feature, Ariel (the title character) was white.
Walsh said if everyone agreed that color-blind casting was acceptable in all cases, he would be fine with this. However, he sees hypocrisy in progressives cheering projects such as The Little Mermaid while objecting to other acting parts given to people whose race, sex and/or sexual orientation don’t align with those of their characters.
In a side comment, Walsh stated that selecting Bailey wasn’t scientifically accurate. He said only people with translucent skin should portray deep sea creatures as these animals look like skeletons swimming undersea.
He was raked over the coals for making such an observation. Critics pointed out that mermaids are mythical beings, so we can’t judge them according to scientific standards. In addition, there are many deep sea creatures whose skin is not translucent.
Of course, Walsh later said he was only kidding when he declared this. Well, perhaps he was.
But his focus was on the hypocrisy of progressives for their double standard when it came to commenting on casting choices and how empty and woke the Disney remake was. He didn’t chastise the racists who went ballistic over Bailey’s casting of a character in a fictional story. If he believes we should all accept people regardless of their skin color, why wouldn’t this aspect of the debate be important to him?
Walsh has a valid point about how ridiculous parts of the anti-racist movement have become. Whether it’s labeled “identity politics”, “critical race theory”, “DEI” or simply “being woke,” the founding ideology of this progressive mindset is profoundly flawed.
The Economist magazine recently published an opinion piece on where this movement is going now that it seems to have peaked in popularity. I appreciated the way it summarized the problems with this ideology:
“[I]n the past decade, a form of wokeness has arisen on the illiberal left [that] is characterized by extreme pessimism about America and its capacity to make progress, especially on race. According to this view, all the country’s problems are systemic or structural, and the solutions to them are illiberal, including censorship and positive discrimination by race. This wokeness defines people as members of groups in a rigid hierarchy of victims and oppressors. Like the Puritans of old, adherents focus less on workable ideas for reducing discrimination than on publicly rooting out sinful attitudes in themselves and others (especially others).”
I cringed when I heard some of the things that anti-racist activists said in Walsh’s movie. They’re intent on compelling white people to engage in an emotional self-flagellation for being white. They won’t tolerate any opposition to their views or consider that they may be wrong.
This isn’t to suggest that racism is behind us and that we’ve achieved a level playing field for everyone. Obviously, a great deal of hard work still needs to be done to continue reducing the prevalence of racism and its effects.
But many anti-racists refuse to acknowledge what progress has been made in this country regarding race relations. They also fail to see the shortcoming of an overly simplistic ideology that segregates all people into the classes of victims and villains. Real life isn’t that black and white, so to speak, and this form of anti-racism doesn’t take into account the many nuances that people experience.
So Walsh’s film touches on some pertinent issues. However, it explores this aspect of anti-racism primarily for the sake of ridiculing it.
It doesn’t delve into why this ideology doesn’t work or how to improve on it. Am I Racist? merely provides fodder for the culture war rather than attempts to build understanding between people with conflicting views.
People who can’t stand wokeness will love Am I Racist? just as people who adhere to this viewpoint will despise the movie. It offers nothing to make viewers look beyond their own sentiments.
And once again, Walsh doesn’t truly reflect the image he projects. He clings to ideas on people’s identities that are just as outrageous as those of anti-racists. Who is he to lecture anyone against embracing absurdities when he holds more than a few of his own?