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Film Review: Am I Racist?
Yesterday I went to go see one of the, uh, more controversial movies of the year. So a plot summary, some general thoughts, and then speculation about the culture war implications.
The story of the movie
It begins with Matt trying to learn about America's systemic racism and be a good ally. I don't know that anyone will actually believe this part, but it's the plot justification. So, he meets with some anti-racism experts and it does not go well. After he's kicked out of a anti-racism workshop when his real identity is discovered, he decides to disguise himself as a hipster, inspired by the fashion choices of his interview subjects for What is a Woman?. He becomes a certified DEI expert on the internet and begins attending interviews and workshops to see what the anti-racists have to say, then attempts to spread the word, still disguised as a hipster. This does not go well either, some stoners call him a racist and then a biker bar decides to hold an intervention about how he needs to respect black people more. So, he decides to sit his white ass down and listen to black people in some dirt poor majority black podunk town in the deep south. A collection of pastors, grannies, and small business owners- all of them very dark black- advise him to put down the critical race theory and pick up the bible.
Instead of taking this advice, he returns to found his own DEI training company. https://www.dotheworkworkshop.com/ is clearly satire, but the film plays it as completely serious, and he recruits the attendees for his first anti-racism workshop on craigslist. They have clearly been told that this is a genuine anti-racist DEI exercise and that the documentary they appear in is for genuine anti-racist DEI educational purposes, and they start walking out as they realize it isn't- some when they have to label themselves on a racist scale, the same one in the link, some when he brings in his racist uncle in a wheelchair for participants to berate over an insensitive joke from twenty years ago, and the rest who don't show signs of mental illness when he brings out the whips for self-flagellation. It is one of the participant's eagerness to actually do the last part which leads him to break character and have an onscreen crisis of faith, which he goes through as a guest appearance as a diversity expert on one of those local news programs my dad always called 'Gay Morning (insert locality)'.
The film ends with a monologue about treating people equally, and the virtue of colorblindness.
General Thoughts
The film subtitled meetings with diversity experts with the fee they charged to appear. While some of them seemed to genuinely be believers, many of them came off as just wanting the money and not caring very much at all about what they were saying. Indeed, a few of them looked like they knew they were appearing in a hostile documentary and were more than happy to do so for the right price. Only one of them- a combative campus activist- seemed ready to make personal sacrifices for the sake of her ideology. I would consider her a bit unhinged, but she has my respect as a true believer. Other than in that one case, the point of anti-racism being a money making industry not very concerned with the people it's notionally helping was made very effectively. In What is a Woman? interviewees got offended at hostile questioning all the time; not here. The mother who made national news about her black children being snubbed by sesame street in particular gave off a strong vibe of 'well I guess I have to stick to this story to collect tens of thousands of dollars, so there we are'.
As you might expect, DEI activists did not come off well. Several of them seemed unhinged, many of them seemed cynically lying. The first anti-racist workshop host(her fee- $30k) mentioned that she felt unsafe emotionally around so many white people to open the workshop. I can, for myself, remember doing some work for my day job at a 'racial healing center' hosting an 'antiracist yoga class'. I felt uncomfortable in the sense of just clearly not belonging, but also a bit creeped out at the sense of fear directed at me, not with the suspicion that I would actually do anything, but just fear because? I also remember wondering how these people were all free at 10 am on a Tuesday. This idea of suspicion of white people doing?, where ? was clearly not any actual action- like they weren't worried about the KKK showing up here or even a white person getting angry and subjecting them to verbal abuse- but just something that upsets the vibes/makes things ritually impure, it's unclear.
The people who more conventionally pay these thousands-of-dollars fees for DEI experts come off as mostly gullible and unwilling to make personal changes or sacrifices. Lots of them are portrayed as very concerned about first world problems. And they would rather spend thousands of dollars for woke Cathari to absolve their guilt than do anything about it. I don't think the intent was to point to anti-racism as an analogue to gnosticism, if for no other reason than the normies not knowing what gnosticism is. But the parallels are really there! A lot of this stuff is knowledge that will be revealed as the initiate becomes purified and perfected from an outside world which is evil and can't be fixed, and can only be guided by the pure ones. There's a scene early in the movie where Matt visits an anti-racist bookstore and is told a book, titled after the N-word(the cover is shown but the title is never pronounced), is one he's not ready for and he should come back later on in his anti-racist journey. But to the Cathari in the film, dropping $$ is the best evidence of separation from the demiurge.
This movie was hilarious, but it did not seem to be a super-reliable source of information. Evidence of selective footage use, careful tricksiness to get damning soundbites, etc was very there. Particular the Robin DiAngelo scene, she came off as perhaps being pressured into doing and agreeing with things she wasn't a fan of- but the interviewees for What is a Woman? would have just kicked him out and forfeited their $15k.
Culture war
First off, I think this really cements that the right has figured out to hit the left by portraying their fringes as ridiculous. No hyperventilating about 1984 or they're coming for our guns- more 'this is what they actually believe(cast in the least charitable possible light)- decide for yourself if it's stupid'. I think this film did an ok job of that, but a much better job of casting DEI experts as being experts in anti-raci$m. It probably shows a broader shift, as well, towards the use of right-wing humor as a political strategy; the normies will watch things which entertain them.
Second, right wing talking points are fairly mainstream. It's OK to be a normiecon in the public sphere; I saw this in a normal theater that was showing Betelgeuse and Alien: Romulus down the hallway. It doesn't seem to have been supercontroversial that Am I Racist? was getting released in normal theaters. I didn't see any protesters- and I went to see it in a not-white part of Dallas- and the ticket guy didn't care.
Third, Matt Walsh is clearly influential among normiecons. This film had a lot more money behind it than What is a Woman?, and the people backing normiecon advocacy are obviously willing to put themselves behind Walsh. This is important because Matt Walsh seems willing to at least try to push the overton window rightwards; it's possible that this is an early indicator of the partisan lines hardening tribally.
I don't "trust" Matt Walsh. He's exactly the kind of controlled opposition boomercon who would lean into DR3 fail takes and decry the left for its racism and prejudice.
Do you think we're going to get to a world where elected officials say "HBD is true actually and that's why blacks underperform". I really don't think so. I'm not even sure we should, although it would be better if people could understand it without necessarily saying it.
The 1990s race blind society was a good Schelling point. I think we can and should go back there.
And Matt Walsh is incredibly brave. It takes a lot of guts to make a movie like this. I trust him not to cuck a lot more than I would someone who needs good standing from the elites such as Mitt Romney or Dick Cheney.
Hell, the guy went on Joe Rogan and said straight up that marriage is between a man and a woman and is for the purpose of procreation. He sticks to his guns.
As I’ve pointed out a million times before, it was not a good Schelling point, because it was inherently unstable. It required a massive, society-wide coordinated effort to pretend not to notice something that’s obvious. And more specifically, it required black people to participate in that coordination, and to sacrifice a huge amount psychologically as a result. This is a culture with multigenerational stories of (what they consider) grievous mistreatment that has never been made right, and which (as they see it) is directly responsible for the profound differences in achievement and prestige between themselves and other racial groups.
In their minds, white people spent 400 years playing the racial identity politics game and cheating egregiously at it, and then the second blacks had a window where they could have attained parity (let alone the upper hand) whites decided that it was no longer okay to see race, that game is over with, we should just let bygones be bygones.
A plurality of blacks were willing to temporarily accept this new paradigm because they earnestly believed that, given a procedurally (if not materially) level playing field, blacks would inevitably start to move toward parity with whites. Thirty years later that absolutely has not happened, and shows no signs of even getting closer to happening. Why on earth would blacks accept the same “return to colorblindness” when it manifestly did not produce tangible results for them? It was built on a lie. HBD-aware whites disagree with blacks about what exactly that lie was, but neither side fails to recognize that it was indeed a lie.
OK, I could have a number of objections to this description, but let's say it's mostly accurate. What's the alternative? Have 400 years of anti-white racism? Including against whites which had zero part in playing that game - either because they didn't have access to the benefits of the game, which weren't ever spread equally, as they aren't even in racially homogeneous societies, or because - which is very frequent case in America - their ancestors weren't even in America when the game has been played. Yet, somehow they need not to suffer for the sins of some dead people that share the skin hue with them? If not 400, how many years of racism is enough? How many years of racism would not create a completely broken culture integrating this racism and depending on it? How and who would decide that this is the moment we're even and now we can stop being racist to either side?
Let's look at human history. How the wars end? Sometimes they never do, but sometimes it happens. Do the warring sides carefully calculate who hurt whom, how many times, and hurt the other side back until the account is at precisely zero? Or do the decide, one day, that we should stop hurting each other, and whatever grievances we had in store, we are not going to hurt each other over them anymore? I think that's the only way to end a war. It may not please everyone, but I see no other way.
Let's say you say - that's not enough. For the fact that black businesses were refused loans at the racist times, nobody now can ever refuse a loan to a black-owned business. Would it make black businessmen more successful? I don't think so. First of all, any shrewd business would just hire a black person to do nothing but serve as a token - and that's not going to benefit genuine black-owned businesses and also would put a giant asterisk next to the name of every prominent black businessman. Second, banks either find a way to refuse loans they don't want to give, or will be forced to spread the risk - raising interest rates to everyone, and the weakest businesses would be those who will be hurt. Third, criminals sure will be attracted by the prospect of guaranteed loans, and honest businessmen will have trouble competing with crooks, since the banks would be forbidden from distinguishing between them, leaving to eventual washing out of honest business. So, did we improve the situation or did we make it worse?
Just stopping racism may be not satisfactory to many, but I don't see any way of stopping racism outside of stopping it. All other ways will just be hurting a lot of people and not improving anything.
If you’ve read my previous posting on race, you will already know my answer: racial separation of blacks and non-blacks. American blacks go their own way, and forge the best polity they can without the specter of racial wounds from the past weighing them down.
Black-white conflict will never cease in this country so long as blacks continue to lag so far behind other races, which will always be the case barring either a seismic shift in their culture and folkways, a highly effective application of eugenics, or some combination thereof. Since those things are extremely improbable, the alternative is separation.
We don’t have to keep having these fights into perpetuity. However, I think I’ve made a persuasive case that the peace terms you are proposing - unilateral disarmament by blacks, despite no structural changes that could plausibly lead to a future favorable outcome for them - are unrealistic and unsustainable.
Go their own way where? Liberia? I don't see them doing that voluntarily, why would they go to some shithole, they are as American as everybody else (and more than myself, a relatively fresh immigrant, for example). Or just ethnically purge Atlanta and ban whites from every coming in there? Why Atlanta then and not New York or Santa Monica? How that's supposed to work without destroying every principle of American society? I mean sure, if you imagined you are building a simulation from scratch, you could add a rule "black and whites live separately" and see if it works. But this simulation has already been running for a while, and I can't even begin to think that "their own way" would mean in this context. What if they think their own way is keep living in America, just as they did - does it mean whites have to get out?
I don't think it's true. A lot of countries have ethnically heterogeneous population, and a lot of countries have a lot of issues and concerns connected to that. But nowhere (at least not among developed countries) it's as central to literally everything as in America. And it is getting worse. Which also, paradoxically, means it is possible for it to be better - because it has been. And it has been deliberately made worse, for very practical partisan political reasons. If Americans, as a culture, find in themselves to sacrifice their partisan interests to their common culture interests, if they still want to make it better and not just to win over the other team, no matter the cost - it is possible for it to be better. Will it be all ok and nice? No. Shit's probably will be going on for decades, and there would be low-key racism and low-key hatred for a long time. But it can be much better than it is now, and the only thing that is really necessary if for people to want to make it better.
The only way there could be "future favorable outcome for them" is a racist regime actively (and by our current standards, absolutely outrageously) discriminating against people who are not them. Nothing less would make a dent. Even if that were possible, it may persist for one generation, while people who saw the reverse regime are still alive and still feel guilty for it. The next generation would not feel this guilt. They will inevitably demand justice. And then what? How do you give them justice? The only way you know?
I disagree fundamentally with some of @Hoffmeister25's axioms, but in the formulation of the problem he's more or less straightforwardly correct. Blacks will never accept being an underclass any more than whites would, and there is no reason to believe that any solutions inside the Overton window can actually extricate them from their underclass status.
As for solutions, here's a modest proposal I wrote awhile back. As a list of things that are never going to happen, I think there's much to commend it.
I think Hoff would not be wildly enthused with a plan like that, but I wonder if he'd take it. I wouldn't be wildly enthused for it either, and my expectation is that the zone would either turn into a corrupt shithole or what many now would consider a draconian police state in fairly short order. The idea of enforcing "racism is over" outside the zone is likewise laughably unrealistic; blues will never, ever let that weapon be pried from betwixt their fingers.
In any case, I think he's right that the colorblind 90s aren't coming back. Some problems don't have acceptable solutions. We can in fact keep right on burning social cohesion trying to bail water with sieves until things actually fall apart in a serious enough way to leave us with more pressing concerns.
True, and that's why the only solution is to abandon the framework where the measure of equality is the equality of statistical outcomes between races (or any other large population-wide categories, for that matter). This framework is not something that is inevitable and it's not something that is necessary. I don't care how many people who have the same eye color as me and the same nose length as me are rich and how many are poor. I care if I'm rich or poor, I care about whether my family and my friends are rich or poor. I care about whether I could be prevented from being richer or made poorer by unjust means. But wide-area statistical frameworks are meaningless to me - unless they are made meaningful by adopting them as political and cultural framework that is dominant in the society. There's no inherent reason why US should have adopted the racial framework. To be an "underclass" you should first be a "class", and "classes" are entirely arbitrary. Stop obsessing about them and the problem will be gone.
Who are "they"? Any man that can prove a drop of African blood? That's much more people than you think. What happens to other people living there, if they don't want to live in the racist paradise? What does it mean "control completely" - does it secede from the US? What happens to people that want to keep living in the US and keep being US citizens and keep having US laws? I don't see why for example a black professor at local university would suddenly want to subject himself to a regime that may not be able to sustain any universities at all. Doesn't he have any rights?
Areas can't write laws. People write laws. Who will be choosing these people? Will it be mass combat or lottery or how are you planning to choose those people? What if there would be 10 groups of people writing ten competing sets of laws - which group is the real one that gets the full control? How this control would be enforced - will US army and police participate if armed conflict happens? Will it blockade the area if there would be threat of violence spreading out? What about if they decide to build a giant meth factory and ship it to the US? Or even much worse, a giant generic drugs factory, without respecting any US drug patents? Will there be a complete trade embargo?
They already have this status, why we need the racist paradise to achieve what we already have?
Again, we can do it right now - why we need the racist paradise? What if the blacks don't want to live in the racist paradise, but want to keep living in New York and California, only better than they live now? I'm not sure what exactly having the racist paradise zone achieves. If you have a mechanism that can stop the racial grievances, I don't see why you can't use it without that, and if you don't have that mechanism, what did you achieve then?
The past is never coming back, but we're coming into the future, and it can be made better than the present, if there's a will.
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