WATCH: Matt Walsh Talks DEI, Division, and Robin DiAngelo

It may (or may not) surprise you to learn that The Daily Wire documentary Am I Racist?—the fourth-highest grossing box-office film release this weekend—has been met with radio silence from America’s cultural tastemakers. Sure, it has an A rating on CinemaScore and a 99 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, but there’s nary a review to be found from. . . any major news source.

It must be that ignoring a film so poisonous to the spiritual health of the nation is the only appropriate response from polite society.

Happily, I’ve never identified as a member of such a group. So I leaped at the chance to sit down with Matt Walsh, the civilizational menace (and Daily Wire host) behind this ingenious, disturbing, occasionally ham-fisted, and very funny documentary. 

The central gag of Am I Racist? finds Walsh disguising himself as a diversity, equity, and inclusion “expert” who explores the absurd lengths to which a certain set of white people will go to atone for their inescapable racism—as well as the piles of money that can be made from their racial anxieties. It also presents a compelling case that those who sound the loudest alarm bells about “anti-racism” often seem fueled by instincts that are regressive, anti-social, and, well, racist. 

The film’s triumphs are many. Its greatest coup is Walsh’s interview with famed anti-racism purveyor Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility. DiAngelo eagerly debases herself while describing how to meet everyday racial challenges, like walking into a supermarket and discovering a black person is there. (DiAngelo has since claimed she was deceived into participating.)

There’s also a surprisingly heartbreaking moment between a workshop participant and a sick old white man that lays bare the dehumanization behind an anti-racism movement that fixates on race, as opposed to one that attempts to transcend it. And there’s a cringe-inducing segment that finds Walsh waitering at a “Race 2 Dinner” event, for which white women pay five grand a pop to be hectored, insulted, and instructed to decolonize themselves (a procedure I’ve always thought should be done in the privacy of one’s home, but never mind).

It is not a perfect film. It falters when Walsh’s disdain for his adversaries is most palpable—for instance, in a scene (partially released online) that sees him being kicked out of a workshop where white people grieve their privilege. . . or something. The scene’s humor, and its humanity, are compromised by the fact that the participants aren’t being subtly mocked, but rather openly antagonized by Walsh, who views them as lesser mortals. Contempt and comedy are not natural bedfellows.

The same could be said, of course, of me and Matt Walsh, who has gained a healthy following with his regular diatribes against child sexualization, infanticide as birth control, and other supposed bedrocks of the Democratic Party. Walsh is not someone I ever thought I’d be all that excited to meet—here he is, for instance, relitigating gay marriage—but such is the power of art: I’ll take brains and talent over my own politics any day.

I initially wanted to profile Walsh by visiting him at his Nashville home. That plan was quashed by his security team: He has apparently had to move twice due to death threats. Walsh offered instead to meet me at a cigar lounge he frequents, so it was there that we sat down to have a smoke and a chat about his film and his life.

There are many issues that Matt Walsh and I could have argued about—and some that we actually did. Mostly I came away from my afternoon marveling at how much common cause there could be between an atheist Jew from Brooklyn and a conservative Christian in Nashville.

DEI may save this country after all.

If you like what you see, watch Ben’s dispatch from West Hollywood: “The California Progressives Trying to Cancel Affordable Housing.” You can also learn more about “Ben Meets America!” 

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