Am I Racist?
New Daily Wire Film Wants to be the next What Is a Woman?
Am I Racist? is a one-hour-and-forty-minute documentary from The Daily Wire. It was released in the U.S. on September 13, 2024. It stars Matt Walsh. Walsh had previously starred in the Daily Wire's 2022 documentary, What Is a Woman? That film interrogated trans extremism. Woman enjoys a high 78% score from professional reviewers at the Rottentomatoes site, and an even higher 86% score from amateur reviewers. For this reviewer, What Is a Woman? is a must-watch film that makes important points in sometimes funny ways. Am I Racist? is merely so-so. A key difference between the two superficially similar documentaries lessens the impact of the newer work. More on that, below.
Am I Racist? placed within the top five money-making films the weekend it opened. It has already made more than its small budget. The Associated Press reports, "The Daily Wire movie Am I Racist? placed fourth at the box office, with an estimated $4.7 million from only 1,517 theaters … Am I Racist? cost a reported $3 million to make." Walsh fans have flooded the Rottentomatoes site with enthusiastic reviews, earning the film a 99% score among amateur reviewers.
Walsh is a 38-year-old conservative political activist, podcaster, and bestselling author. He comments frequently on trans extremism, feminism, and race. He has heavy black facial hair and he wears black-rimmed glasses and flannel shirts. The Daily Wire merch store sells "Matt Walsh flannels" and their tongue-in-cheek but slightly serious description provides an introduction to Walsh's sarcastic style. "Do you want to unleash your inner alpha male? Do you want to impress friends and family with your rugged charm and manly skills? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you need this flannel. It's not just a shirt, it's a lifestyle. It's a statement that says you're not afraid of the woke, a shirt that says 'I want to talk to him,' but screams 'Don't.' Whether you're chopping down a tree, wrestling a bear, fixing a car, or hosting a hit show for the Daily Wire, you'll look and feel great in this flannel."
Am I Racist? opens with Walsh on a local TV news program from Utah. He is sporting a wig with a short pony tail and self-identifying as a DEI expert. He tells the program's hosts that he is on a "journey." He offers a "land acknowledgment," mentioning that Ute, Paiute, and Shoshone Indians once lived on the land now occupied by the TV studio before that land was "ransacked and ravage by the white man." In his capacity as a DEI expert, Walsh encourages the white TV hostess to stand with him. He tells the non-white hostess to sit. Walsh and the white hostess stretch their arms over their heads. They are "stretching out of their whiteness." Walsh, as we later learn in the film, did disguise himself as a DEI expert and he was an invited guest on local news shows.
Walsh later sits in a diner, without the pony tail wig. A black waitress asks him how he likes his coffee. He hesitates for a long time, unable to respond that he likes his coffee black. He muses and we hear his thoughts. "Growing up in the nineties," he says, "I never thought much about race." Walsh, and the film, then posit that the left and the media are responsible for insisting that race is an issue, when in fact it is not. Further, the media and the left make race an issue for their own financial gain. In the film, Walsh attempts to prove these two points by masquerading as a man sincerely attempting to defeat racism.
In a meeting room, Walsh is seated across from an attractive and pleasant young redhead, identified as Kate Slater. Slater's webpage is here. The Professor Watchlist page for Slater is here. Clips of Slater's performance, along with her reaction to the completed film, are here. Walsh assumes a false persona. He pretends to Slater that he "wants to do the anti-racism work but I don't know what it is."
Slater says that America is racist to its bones. Parents should lecture babies about race even before the babies can talk. Slater refers to her anti-racist road map, found here. The first step in the road map is reallocation of resources of all kinds. From the road map: "The median White family has 41 times more wealth than the median African-American family and 22 times more wealth than the median Latinx family … Liberation for Black and Brown communities requires a redistribution of White wealth and resources, which was accumulated through violence and oppression. We can’t abolish White supremacy without abolishing capitalism."
Slater says that her four-year-old daughter is attracted to white Disney princesses. Walsh mentions that his daughter likes Moana, a non-white Disney heroine. He says that her liking a non-white heroine is a good thing, but that if his daughter dresses up as Moana for Halloween, that would be cultural appropriation, so he is confused as to the best approach. Walsh's goal here is to demonstrate that anti-racism language is self-contradicting.
Walsh is in a bookstore in Colorado. He asks the clerk to recommend books that will educate him on his "journey." They visit a bookshelf chock full of anti-racism texts. One is titled N----r. Later in the film, Walsh will attempt, over the phone, to order a copy of N----r from this very bookstore. In this phone conversation, Walsh says he wants to read the book, but he can't bring himself to speak the title. Here Walsh is lampooning the social norm that whites never pronounce this racist term. Again, Walsh is ridiculing any attempt to educate oneself about racism. If he can't even pronounce the title of a book for sale on the shelves of a section devoted to racism, then the entire project is suspect. In fact, though, Walsh could have simply said, "I want to order a copy of the book that has the N-word as its title."
The full title of the book that Walsh reduces merely to a joke is N----r: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. The book's author is Randall Kennedy, the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard University. Kennedy is sometimes called, and sometimes criticized as, a conservative. He has pointed out the problems with calls for reparations, and he has criticized the "defund the police" movement, writing in his book Say It Loud!: On Race, Law, History, and Culture that "It is not improper for a society to protect itself from individuals who rape, murder, assault, or rob others in violation of laws that set boundaries that, if crossed, make one vulnerable to imprisonment." Kennedy has also criticized "anti-racism gone awry." Walsh could benefit from reading and engaging with the work of Kennedy, rather than merely using his accurately titled book as nothing but a punchline.
Walsh, now with wig and pony tail, is seen at a "Grieving White Privilege" workshop facilitated by Breeshia Wade, a very pretty and petite black woman; her website is here. Walsh informs viewers that Wade received $30,000 for the workshop's appearance in the film.
Wade opens the workshop by announcing that she is not safe in "white spaces." She asks participants what comes to mind when they hear the words "white people." "Cringe" one white person says. Wade asks participants to give their names and pronouns.
Walsh, posing as "Steven," disrupts the workshop. He stands and speaks loudly and repeatedly, interrupting other participants. He steps out; participants inform each other of his real identity. He's not Steven; he's Matt Walsh. The unfunny charade ends.
I do not support what I saw of Breeshia Wade's work, either in my quick visit to her website or in Am I Racist? On the other hand, Walsh is simply rude and annoying in this segment, and his bratty shenanigans fell flat for me. I felt as ripped off as Walsh wants viewers to feel about the high price Wade charges for her appearance. "I paid to see this movie?" I asked myself, as I looked at my watch, eager for this pointless and irritating scene to conclude. The only thing Walsh communicated to me in this scene was that socially insensitive people are a pain to be around.
I found myself sympathizing, against my will, with Wade, who was gracious, polite, and soft-spoken, while also, as the workshop facilitator, being appropriately assertive in service to the needs of the majority of attendees. Wade never lost her cool. She gently but firmly informed "Steven" that if he continued to interrupt other participants, she'd have to ask him to leave, an entirely reasonable request.
I also felt, during this scene, sympathy for the workshop attendees. They struck me as sincere people eager to do the right thing. What they define as the "right thing" – attending a workshop entitled "Grieving White Privilege" – is very different from what I define as the right thing. But their motivation to do the right thing is like my motivation to do the right thing. To me that shared motivation is a potential bridge over the gaps between my approach and theirs. If I were talking to these folks, I'd start with, "We both want to do the right thing when it comes to racial tensions. Now let's talk about what those 'right things' are." I would bet that we have more in common than not.
Walsh's approach, though, is to humiliate the workshop participants, who, again, are not celebrities who can afford publicity teams to massage whatever the fallout is from this film. For the purposes of the scene he wanted, Walsh could have chosen to pixelate the faces of the other persons at the workshop. Given Walsh's diatribes, no one else said anything significant. I think that Walsh wrongly and cheaply exploited these workshop participants.
In the next scene, Walsh is alone in a room with an overweight black woman wearing a hot pink leotard. She is using a white board and teaching him about racism. Walsh now claims DEI expert status.
Walsh meets with Sarra Tekola, a former Arizona State student who, in a viral video, yelled at white male students for sitting in a public space on campus meant for non-whites. Tekola is described online thus, "Sarra Tekola has a Ph.D. in Sustainability. They are a co-founder and co-director for Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro. They were a lead organizer in Divest UW, where they divested coal. They helped to start a 'Block the Bunker' campaign in Seattle that blocked a police station from being built in a POC community. They started a campaign at ASU that won a multicultural center. Their activism has been featured in Democracy Now, CNN, Rolling Stone and was named by Outside Magazine as one of the '30 under 30' in 2016 and was a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow from 2018-2021."
Tekola tells Walsh that white people are comparable to Nazis. Whiteness must be abolished. The entirety of "white culture" is "buying things and stealing things."
Walsh travels to DC, where he films gullible people signing a petition to change the name of the Washington Monument to the George Floyd Monument, to increase its height, and also to paint it black.
Walsh then works as a waiter for a "Race to Dinner" event. Hostesses Saira Rao, a daughter of Indian immigrants, and African American Regina Jackson charge white women thousands of dollars to sit at a dinner table and receive verbal abuse.
Rao and Jackson describe their hustle on their webpage thus, "Race2Dinner experiences include two hours with Regina Jackson and Saira Rao for 8 white women … breaking bread together helps to facilitate conversations around white supremacy, racism and xenophobia. Race2Dinner Experiences require white women to participate in very direct, exceedingly difficult conversations. It is not for the faint of heart. It is not 'Racism 101.' It is tough, vulnerable, and full of emotion. The time spent at Race2Dinner Experiences will open minds, create dialogue and reveal truths in a way that is both incredibly challenging and unbelievably liberating."
Rao and Jackson present as psychopaths; they are clearly sadistic hatemongers. In her Penguin Random House photo, Jackson looks like the classic Disney villainess; see here. Saira Rao manages to fake a shallow "smile" in her photo; it's the kind of mirthless smile one sees in hostage videos. Fake smile notwithstanding, Rao picks an all-caps fight with the reader in the first sentence of her bio. DO NOT MISSPELL MY NAME! An online Sanskrit dictionary says that "Saira" means "belonging to the plough." Can we just call her that?
Rao and Jackson are the most despicable characters in Am I Racist? The white women attending Rao and Jackson's dinner event appear to be spineless masochists. Rao and Jackson bully participants. All you white women do is talk s--- about each other, they say. You call each other fat. You would not get off your Peloton bikes to improve society. Republicans are Nazis. No white person is not part of white supremacy. The entire system has to burn. This country must burn. It's a piece of s---.
During Rao's hate speech, Walsh, disguised as a waiter, offers verbal encouragement. He also drops plates noisily. He eventually sits down at the table and raises a wine glass, inviting anyone who is a racist to toast with him. Walsh's antics are all well and good, but nothing Walsh does is as outrageous as the hate proceeding from the mouths of Rao and Jackson, or the passivity of the white masochists who paid to participate. Walsh merely gilds the lily.
Walsh visits a white biker bar in the South. His interview subjects are heavily tattooed and wearing leather vests. Some wear t-shirts emblazoned with obscene messages. The bikers dismiss racism as of negligible importance. One of Walsh's interview subjects is a bald, neckless, obese man who speaks with the roughened voice of an advanced alcoholic. The obese alcoholic is so clearly unhealthy that using him as a geek sideshow didn't work for me.
In 2022, Jodi Brown posted video of her daughter and niece appearing to be rejected by a costumed character at the Sesame Place theme park in Middletown, Pennsylvania. Sesame Place explained that the costumed employee made a "No" hand gesture in order to decline to pick a child up for a photo; he did not signal "No" to preclude contact with black children. Further, as seems obvious, the costumes interfere with the performers' ability to see each child clearly. Brown did not accept Sesame Place's explanation, and insisted that the costumed character was racist. Walsh chats with Brown, who, he says, took $50,000 to make a very brief appearance in the film. Walsh points out that there is no proof that the person inside the costume was white.
Walsh next talks to Wilfred Reilly, a black man and author of the book Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War. Reilly insists that many alleged hate crimes are faked for financial gain, and that there is no epidemic of hate crimes. This serves Walsh's overall message that racism is not really a problem and that media and leftists sell racism for financial gain.
Walsh next reenacts Jussie Smollett's alleged hate crime. This viewer saw no point in this skit; it was humorless and added nothing to our understanding of the event.
Walsh sits down with Robin DiAngelo, a very wealthy and influential race hustler. DiAngelo is, as ever, pretty, perky, and nice. DiAngelo advises against "oversmiling." When whites encounter black people, they must not smile too broadly, because that might make the black person uncomfortable, she says. Walsh invites into their conversation a black producer, Ben. Walsh offers "reparations" to Ben, that is, all the cash Walsh has in his wallet. Walsh pressures DiAngelo to give Ben the cash in her wallet, and she willingly does so.
DiAngelo has since posted a response to the film. I am very much not a fan of Robin DiAngelo or her agenda, but her response strikes me as reasonable. She says that Walsh lied to her, and that is true; he did. He gave a false name, a false name for the film, and a false agenda. She says that her concept of "reparations" is not what Walsh invited her to do, that is, for whites to give randomly encountered black people the cash from their wallets.
I don't support reparations in any form, including DiAngelo's concept of reparations, but her response is both courteous and factually correct. Walsh misrepresented how DiAngelo conceives of reparations. In other words, Walsh mounts a straw man argument, and straw man arguments are logical fallacies. There are ample, logically and ethically sound reasons to attack DiAngelo's work. There is no need to resort to logical fallacies.
Walsh is then shown pretending to be a racism workshop facilitator. White people arrive and sit down. Again, these are not celebrities. They don't know what will occur during this workshop. They mean well and are curious. And Walsh humiliates these average people in his film. Several have enough sense to get up and leave, but some stay, perhaps more out of curiosity than anything.
Walsh brings forward an overweight white man wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and sitting in a wheelchair. Walsh repeats a racist joke that this man, allegedly Walsh's "Uncle," told at a family gathering. Walsh invites participants to verbally abuse this old man. A couple of participants do so. Then Walsh brings out leather whips, and asks participants to whip themselves as punishment for their white guilt. Some participants leave. No participants are shown whipping themselves.
My primary demand from any film is not to bore me, and Am I Racist? bored me from its opening scenes straight through to the end. I paid money to see Am I Racist? in a theater, and when I pay money to see a film, in addition to not being bored, I want something compelling to look at. Racist offered pedestrian direction of almost two uninspiring hours of looking at Walsh's face. This would be okay for a YouTube video but not for a theatrical release. I didn't like the humiliation of the average folks, from the obese drunk at the biker bar to the participants in the two workshops.
What made What Is a Woman? such a good film and Am I Racist? not? In Woman, Walsh did not pretend to be someone else. He found key figures in trans extremism and he simply asked them the most elemental questions about their beliefs. He thus gave these folks enough rope to hang themselves. His interviews with powerful trans extremists Michelle Forcier, Marci Bowers, Gert Comfrey, and Patrick Grzanka are devastating and must-watch exposés. Walsh doesn't engage in any tricks in these interviews. He asks basic questions and allows his interlocutors to speak at length. He thus fillets them so thoroughly that if they had any sense of shame they would publicly recant.
Walsh also talks to persons seriously harmed by trans extremism. These victims include Scott Newgent, who sustained serious damage to her body from trans surgery; an unnamed father estranged from his child by trans extremism; Tanner Cross, a teacher punished for not using false pronouns; and Selina Soule, an athlete cheated by males who competed against her as females. He conducts serious interviews with serious critics of trans extremism like Miriam Grossman and Sara Stockton. He goes into the history of trans extremism, discussing John Money.
Am I Racist? does not begin to approach the same depth, seriousness, and success as What Is a Woman? Racist also does not skewer its targets as thoroughly as Woman. I would love to have seen a version of Racist focused solely on punking Saira Rao and Regina Jackson.
Walsh could have done what he did with Woman, and conferred with experts in the field. Black conservatives like Jason L Riley, author of False Black Power, John McWhorter, author of Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, and Shelby Steele, author of White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era would have added depth to this film that it otherwise lacks.
Walsh could have interviewed real victims of race hysteria. Such interviews would have served as reminders that Saira Rao's and Regina Jackson's hate, and Robin DiAngelo's costly poppycock, are not victimless crimes. Potential interview subjects might include Greg Patton, the USC professor suspended for informing his students that, in Chinese, "nega" is a filler sound similar to "um" in English, or Erika and Nicholas Christakis, Yale educators raked over the coals for their "free speech and tolerance" stance on Halloween costumes. An interview with Jodi Shaw, a heroine in a showdown over a race hoax at Smith College, would have been worth the price of my ticket. You can read more about Shaw here.
I had another problem with Am I Racist? and I have a similar problem with Walsh's work on trans extremism. There have always been, and there probably always will be, effeminate boys and masculine girls. As a child, I witnessed bullying of an effeminate boy in school. This bullying was so ugly, destructive, and dangerous that the boy had to leave the school. I knew a lesbian girl who was dragged from a moving car, for no other reason than her sexuality. Yes, for the moment, trans extremism is exerting power in public life in the West. This is a temporary phenomenon. People whose personal sense of self does not conform with their physical sex will always be a minority, and minorities, especially those that challenge fundamental norms, will always be vulnerable.
Walsh is a Catholic and so am I. Our faith reminds us, in verses like Leviticus 19:14 and parables like Luke 10:25-37, that we are commanded to exercise compassion. Using humor to tweak those who abuse power, like Michelle Forcier and Saira Rao, is a good idea. But Christians don't have the option of stopping at mockery. We must also exercise compassion. God says so.
It's not just that Walsh holds up workshop attendees to ridicule. These are, again, average people. Not celebrities. They are concerned about a social problem and they are trying to do the right thing. Turning these well-meaning people into the butt of jokes is one problem. But there's a bigger problem.
Walsh says that he grew up in the nineties, and so he never needed to think about racism. I'm older than Walsh. When I was growing up, there were still such things as whites-only water fountains. Had all that passed into the history books by the time Walsh was growing up? No. Schools in New Jersey today are de facto segregated – our schools are the sixth most segregated in the nation. As an educator, I have visited schools in Paterson, NJ, that have few to no white students. Just a couple of miles away, in Wayne, there are majority white schools. Eastside High School in Paterson is 2% white. Forty-five percent of students qualify for free lunch. It is one of the worst high schools in the state. Ridgewood high school, less than six miles away, is one of the best high schools in the nation. Two percent of its population qualifies for free lunch.
Walsh mentions the 1990s. One evening in 1994, in Bloomington, Indiana, I was driving in the front seat of a car with one of my fellow graduate students. It was just the two of us. I am a white woman. The man sitting to my left, the driver, was a black man. We were driving along a road within city limits. A white man in a pickup truck drove up on our left. He drove closer and closer to my fellow student's car. Eventually he drove us off the road entirely.
On July 4, 1999, I was walking along Third Street, one of the main streets in Bloomington. It was a sunny and pleasant day. Suddenly I was confronted by yellow tape and human blood. A member of a white supremacist group had been on a shooting spree. He shot Jews, blacks, and a Korean Christian on the steps of a church. The shooter had previously left hate pamphlets in local driveways. I spoke about my scholarly work at the Hillel in Bloomington. The Hillel required security, as it received so many threats from white supremacists. Things were not solved in the 1990s, and they aren't solved today. Witness the 2015 Charleston church shooting and the 2022 Buffalo supermarket shooting.
Am I Racist? argues that racism is not a problem and that media and leftists make it a problem for their own financial gain. Not just headline events, but everyday life, inform me that Walsh's argument is incorrect.
My black students were more likely to face more serious life challenges than my white students. Yes, I had white students who were poor, who had serious health issues, who had inadequate parents. Such life handicaps were just more frequently encountered among black students. These weren't statistics about average wealth accumulation. These were students who grew up in poverty, insecurity, and deprivation. These students did not think of themselves as part of some larger conflict involving combatants like Matt Walsh on one side and Robin DiAngelo on the other. They were, simply, malnourished, unable to speak Standard English, intimidated, without resources, and afraid. "When the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled." Walsh and DiAngelo represent the elephants. My students were the grass.
Black kids in the U.S. are more than twice as likely as white kids to grow up in poverty. According to the United Negro College Fund, "Among students enrolled in four-year public institutions, 45.9% of Black students complete their degrees in six years—the lowest rate compared to other races and ethnicities. Black men have the lowest completion rate at 40%. This high dropout rate is partially due to the fact that 65% of African American college students are independent, meaning they must balance pursuing a degree with full-time work and family responsibilities." The Institute for Family Studies reports that "By contrast, 78% of Asian students and 68% of white students do so."
As someone who began a professional teaching career in Africa in 1980, I know that the problem is not genetic. Whites are not intellectually superior; blacks are not intellectually inferior. Yes, slavery ended a long time ago and Jim Crow was declared illegal decades ago. The legacy of these evil institutions is still with us. I saw that legacy semester after semester in my students' lives and I see it every day that I walk from majority-minority Paterson to majority white Wayne, NJ.
There's a group that Walsh should have featured in his film but did not. Black conservatives acknowledge that racism still exists, and that racism's long legacy has yet to be vanquished. Where the race hustlers and the black conservatives disagree is in the solution. Race hustlers push white guilt and black helplessness. Race hustlers demonize whites. Race hustlers insist that blacks not be held to any standards. And race hustlers argue for handouts as a solution.
Black conservatives recognize the gaps between average blacks and average whites. The gaps in life expectancy – for whites, about 76 years; for blacks, about 70 years. The education gaps, the income gaps, the assets gaps, all tell us that something needs to be done. Black conservatives like Steele, Riley, and McWhorter say that what needs to be done needs to be done by blacks themselves. Blacks must reject an oppositional culture that was a reaction against white supremacy. Steele lays out a plan involving delayed gratification, unity of the nuclear family, entrepreneurialism, individual initiative, and self-sacrifice. Walter E. Williams, in "How Not to Be Poor," preaches: finish high school; don't have kids till married; stay married; get any job and stick with it; don't break the law. Orlando Patterson recommends rejection of "Cool Pose Culture." John McWhorter says blacks must drop victim identity and separatism, and join mainstream society and respect intellectual activity.
The above recommendations for overcoming the legacy of evil done to blacks in the past came from people who, just like Walsh, reject race hustling. But they also come from people who acknowledge that America and Americans didn't solve all that racism stuff back in the 1990s. White supremacy's legacy is still here. There are still victims. We can argue that LBJ's great society and other white savior programs did more harm than good, but that diagnosis didn't solve any of the problems of my broken black students. Only commitment from a caring other did.
I'm glad Walsh skewered race hustlers in Am I Racist? I wish he had also acknowledged that race hustlers are able to make a buck because they are addressing a real problem – the very real legacy of white supremacy. I wish he had also acknowledged that there are people who are addressing that problem from a conservative point of view. Again, Walsh is a very public Catholic. Being Catholic is not just about telling people that they are sinning and they may end up in Hell. Being Catholic is also about compassion, and the duty of responsible action.
Danusha Goska is the author of God Through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery
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