Am I Racist? (2024): Did Matt Walsh infiltrate and trick the woke movement? | Under the Docs 006

The text discusses a 2024 film titled “Am I Racist?” directed by Justin Folk and narrated by Matt Walsh. The film, backed by the Daily Wire, explores the concept of racism and prejudice, particularly focusing on white people’s attitudes towards black people. The narrator humorously interacts with experts in the field of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), asking them rhetorical questions about racism. The film doesn’t make specific claims but rather highlights popular claims in mainstream media, allowing for a light-hearted, comedic approach to a serious topic.
The text discusses a movie that uses humor and satire to critique ‘woke’ culture and the concept of white privilege. The film, backed by the Daily Wire, features a man who intentionally makes others uncomfortable by overemphasizing his guilt and privilege. Despite some scenes being overly dramatic and the information not being entirely new, the movie is seen as an extended sketch poking fun at the extremes of wokeism. The main point of the film is to question whether racism is systemic or if it’s individual prejudice, using various scenarios to explore this idea.
The text discusses a movie that explores the topic of racism and prejudice, focusing on the character Matt Walsh. The movie questions whether Walsh is racist or just prejudiced, and it also highlights the commercialization of anti-racism studies and seminars. The text suggests that the movie was popular among conservative audiences and may have contributed to further societal division. It concludes by questioning the movie’s classification as a documentary, suggesting it might be more of a political satire.
The text discusses a movie that, while not terrible, is seen as shallow and filled with recycled material. It’s a mix of sketches and mockery, with some overproduced scenes. The author suggests there are funnier things available on platforms like YouTube and TikTok. The text ends with a mention of upcoming documentaries that are important to watch, indicating a continuation of a trend of connecting related documentaries.

Under the docks. Yeah, under the docks. Buried deeper. We breaking the locks. Footage got clip. They erase all the shots. They collect the dots. Under the docks. Under the docks, yeah, under the docks. We’re back under the docks. Today we’re looking into Am I Racist? A 2024 film directed by Justin Folk and narrated by Matt Walsh. Now, this film, the reason we’re covering it, it’s kind of a huge deal because it’s backed by the Daily Wire, and anybody that knows Matt Walsh knows that he did the what is a woman? Which did pretty well. And people kind of liked it, and it got into people’s faces because it’s going into this DEI and wokeism.

And, you know, right now, you either are woke or you’re against it. And. And it feeds that narrative. And Daily Wire is a big platform, so they’ve gotten around. This one is really easy to find. Not like some of the other ones we’ve discussed. This one you can find anywhere You. As soon as you put I am racist, it should pop up. This one is also unique because it had a theatrical release. Like, you could actually go and see this movie, depending on what city you’re in, but you could see it at a mainstream local theater right alongside Avengers or X Men or whatever the hell else was playing at the time.

So that kind of makes us stand apart. I think this might be the first documentary of everything we’ve seen so far that had a theatrical release. So this is about as mainstream as we’ve gotten so far. And it kind of does summarize the first two episodes that we did in the series, all for Floyd and the Trayvon Martin Hoax. This one kind of puts a nice little bow on that. And it also ends it with some softer edges instead of just like, getting even more sort of, like, inflammatory. And they basic. The basic premise of this is, are people just racist or are they more prejudiced? Is this a systematic thing? They kind of explore that avenue of it more specifically.

I would almost say that the movie has an unofficial subtitle that I’m submitting here that’s not from Matt Walsh or Daily Wire, but that it’s Am I racist? And in parentheses, as a white guy. Like, it’s. It’s not really for just anyone to be considering this question. It’s really focused on our white people, in particular. Racist against black people, full stop. So plotting the course. Matt Walsh, he does some funny stuff. He. It becomes a DEI expert in diversity. He actually really paid the money to become certified. And I thought that was hilarious. This film to me, it’s fun.

I know not everybody will enjoy it. For me, I enjoyed it. I laughed a lot. Like, I thought it was really humorous, like at times, you know, but telling the story of, like you said, specifically being a white cisgender male, that this is speaking to you like this film is directed towards whatever that is. And I also almost want to point out early on that we’re calling this a documentary. But I don’t know if it makes any specific key claims. It really, it’s just more of pokes and prods and makes fun of the current, you know, the people that would require you to have a DEI license.

Like, that’s sort of the reason he gets a DEI certification, a little card. And he starts showing it off to anyone that he can in any context, like, oh, by the way, I’m DEI certified. That’s the whole premise of the movie, is that he’s meeting up with people that have the exact opposite view that Matt Walsh does and the Daily Wire typically do. But he’s meeting with the experts and then sort of asking the. The dumbest questions. But they’re like, they’re obvious questions. Like, these are the questions that usually are being asked rhetorically. Matt Walsh asks the people that are writing books about DEI and why you should consider yourself racist.

He’s asking them these rhetorical questions on camera in a very like, like, formal sit down interview way. He’s hiring them in some cases, even tells you exactly how much they charge for some of their seminars in order to go to them. So it’s really hard though to go down a list of specific claims that he’s making because he does a great job at this movie is about him asking this question, am I racist? And then asking a whole bunch of other questions like, well, would this be racist? Does this make me racist? Just over and over again to a whole bunch of different people.

Yeah, I would say instead of claims, it was more of exposing, maybe exposing and putting a light onto some of these things that some people may not know about that. Like, you know, for instance, he went to a white grief seminar where he paid 30 grand to be a part of it. And which is hilarious. Like there’s some really funny parts in it where he, he’s like interjecting in there. They’re asking, what can he do better and what’s his promise to the black community. And the scene that really got me is he’s. This isn’t still. In the beginning of the movie, he’s dressed normal as Matt Walsh, but he calls himself Steve.

And as he’s talking, he’s like, yeah, my promise to the black communities, I’m going to do better, and for the world, I’m going to do better and better. I’m going to be better. And then he stops and the next person starts to talk. And he’s like, wait, I think I remembered something else. And then they’re like, well, hold on, we got to wait. Turns. He’s like, are we gonna come back around? And they’re like, well, we don’t come back around. And he’s like, well, I just don’t want no one to say my promise that I’m about to say.

And then the guy girl proceeds to say. So he’s like, that’s what I was gonna say. And like, to me, there’s a lot of comic relief in it. For people that are either in the middle or, like, that are lean that way will find it humorous. Now, if you lean the other way, you probably think it’s despicable. And he’s just mockery, making a mockery of them. But it from an unbiased state, me being in the middle, I thought it was pretty funny. I think maybe a better way to do the claims for this movie is, is that they allow what the popular claims being pushed in mainstream media.

He allows those claims to come to the forefront. And he, in some cases, he even allows the people that wrote those books that get cited by corporations that then get mentioned on the news, he goes directly to them, lets them make the claim, and then he just throws these rhetorical questions at them. So a lot of those claims, again, they just kind of amount to privilege and DEI and allocation of resources. They don’t go into any sort of reparations talk. So if you’re expecting it to go down that political rabbit hole, it doesn’t even come up once.

And then there’s also a few other things that usually in this space would come up. But he kind of remains laser focused on just the experts that he’s able to talk to and like you said, sometimes antagonizes them, which makes for a good, good theatrical film, but like you said, not necessarily a documentary, because it’s not revealing any information that we don’t know that’s been out there. But it is nice to see, you know, something funny from time to time. This was good from us decompressing from the heavy stuff that we were kind of seeing the last few weeks.

This was really a chill one where you could actually just pop up, put your legs up and eat some Popcorn and laugh and have a good time. Yeah. No aerial drone footage of riots in this one. So the Hidden Treasures. So for me, the Hidden Treasures was just like, actually going and paying the money to talk to these people. Like, he does the. The dinner, the White Grief Seminar. He talks to Robin d’ Angelo. If you guys don’t know who that is, the White Fragility. Pretty much the patriarch of this whole white privilege movement. And she kind of sets the baseline of what everybody was talking and he talking about in the film, because they initiate it by.

After the White Grief, you know, he’s like, well, I gotta put in the work. And he goes to a. A bookstore that. Where he’s explained, like, hey, start here with White Fragility. And he starts reading the book. So the focal point is Robin d’ Angelo, who is kind of like one of the pioneers, quote unquote, for this white privilege movement. And that’s my highlight of this entire movie, is that when he goes and talks to Robin d’ Angelo at the end of this, he’s got, of course, because this is the shtick. He’s got, like, a black camera guy that follows him everywhere.

So after, like, this initial interview, he. He’s kind of acting as if they’re off camera or something. And he’s talking to her and he’s like, oh, yeah, that’s why, you know, the way that I want to show my appreciation. I see a black guy in the room. Sir, I just want to give you some money right now. Can I just give you $20 and just take this on behalf of me and how sorry that I am, and this is me sharing my resources with you. But he’s doing this obviously very sarcastic, but it’s done in a subtle enough way that.

That Robin d’ Angelo is, by all appearances, not hip to the fact that she’s kind of being trolled here. So as he’s doing this, she’s even verbalizes, like, that was weird. And he’s kind of like, why? Why is that weird? Isn’t. Isn’t being uncomfortable part of the doing the work? Like, we should make ourselves uncomfortable. And it’s not about our comfort. It’s about this black guy’s comfort, right? Are you comfortable? And the guy’s like, if you want to give me money, I’ll take money. So they start just kind of like, staring at Robin. And then eventually Robin’s like, do you want me to give you money? And then she writes him a check, or she goes and gets her pocketbook and, like, gives him some Money as well.

It is incredibly hard to watch. I, I got secondhand embarrassment watching this, but it was by far the crowning jewel of this just kind of showing if you were to take some of the claims to their most extreme logical conclusions, that it does put you in these like weird Kafka esque sort of situations that in retrospect, I would love to know what Robin thought of this movie when she saw herself in it. But that, that was by far the, the hidden treasure. And then the other main pros here is I think that so far this movie has the best production quality by a mile.

Even way more than the Trayvon Martin hoax, which was only the best one up until its point. But it was still like a one man show. This one’s got the full force of the daily wire behind it. Which kind of goes to show that it was put into theaters. I don’t think Joe Gilbert’s documentaries would have made it to a full, you know, theatrical release. This one gets the treatment in order to do that. Yeah. And I think some of the overboard moments is some of the production value. Like some of the scenes are a little cheesy.

Like at the end me like where they’re just, you know, he’s getting going back to the scene where he’s pouring the coffee. Because it starts off where he’s getting coffee and he’s like, how do you want it? And she’s. He’s like black. And he’s like, that’s how I like it. And that’s where he starts questioning himself because he’s playing this role, which I understand because it’s theatric, you know, it’s for the theaters. But a little bit of it was a little bit much for a documentary. But I don’t know if it’s necessarily classified as a documentary.

I think it might be, but it’s not a traditional documentary. It’s more of a mockumentary and political satire if anything. But it was still very enjoyable for me. Yes, the whole narrative of this movie is that he goes to a diner and his waitress is black and she asks him how he likes his coffee. And then it shows this internal dialogue where he wants to say black, but then he’s like, will it be weird that I’m saying I want black coffee to this black waitress. Is she going to be offended? And. And then he just says the word black and she’s like ok.

And writes down and walks like it was not an issue. But that was the whole premise of this idea. That was where the seed was Planted in Matt Walsh’s head was when he went to order black coffee from a black waitress. Thus, you get the whole rest of the movie. The. The main con is, for me, it’s that he becomes increasingly antagonistic in this. Like, it comes across in some cases, like a really cheesy Daily Wire version of Pranked. And instead of Ashton Kutcher, you get, you know, Walsh. And one of the things that he does, for example, is in one of those early circles where everyone’s talking about, you know, their white privilege or whatever, he keeps interrupting to the point where the.

The lady says, hey, if you interrupt again, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. And he knows that he’s going over the line. Everyone in the room knows that he’s going over the line to the point where they have a crying room. Which it’s kind of. It’s kind of funny to even mention that. But, yeah, this. This convention that he’s at, they have a room down the hall that if you feel like you have to cry, you leave the meeting and you go in this room and you cry. So he makes use of this cry room, which I don’t know how often people have to use that, but.

And he makes a very big deal about it when he comes back in. They’ve all looked his name up online, and they know that he’s this guy from the Daily Wire. And that’s what leads to him kind of putting on this, like, new Persona where he literally just gets a man bun wig, and that’s his whole entire new Persona. And he puts on, like, a sweater vest or something. And this kind of comes to an absurd climax that at the end of the movie, he pays to be part of this group where these two black ladies will have dinner with you and just talk about all the problems with racism in the country, essentially.

And you’re. It’s only for white women. It’s black women talking to white women. And. And if you’re not a white woman, you’re not even allowed to, I guess, address these two ladies. So he kind of plays an undercover waiter so that he can be a fly on the wall. And then he starts interjecting himself in these people’s conversation all the way to the point where he does slapstick comedy. He’s falling. He’s dropping plates multiple times. He’s, like, sitting down at the table. He brings it so overboard. If this were an episode of Punk, someone would be like, am I getting punked right now? Am I on Candid Camera? And maybe they Just have more decorum that they just didn’t bring that up or maybe they just edit it out of the movie.

But I would just say that if we’re looking at this as if it were a documentary or even a mockumentary, really it was more about Walsh getting in his like funny little one liners and his slapstick comedy and maybe less on presenting any new claims or new information. This is going to tell you maybe what you already know. Although I would say that even if you hate Daily Wire, there might be a reason to still watch this. You might still laugh at some of the stuff that happens. Yeah, and one other thing I’d like to add is I think that since you said no new information, a lot of the information is stuff that we’ve seen on podcasts and tik toks and social media feeds poking fun of wokeism.

That’s pretty much what this is. It’s a, you know, a conservative SNL like long sketch, you know what I mean? It’s like a, an hour and 40 minute sketch where they’re just stretching it as far as they can and they built this character. Or it’s like an SNL sketch turn movie, you know what I mean? Like Pat, where it’s like, ah, that one. Did that one really need a movie? Like it’s entertaining enough though, to keep you through it? For me, I liked all of it until like towards the end there was a couple. But yeah, that’s what I would give.

Mike Ripe is a little bit of the recycled material as presented as if he’s like, it’s our first time knowing that they have these dinners, dinner to race or, or white grief or any of these things. White fragility. We kind of had it out there in, in the sphere. It’s just all kind of put together in here and kind of expose it. But we’ve seen people expose this before on, on YouTube channels and Tik Tok. So that’s one of the gripes I had with it. Take a deep dive now for me, the one deep dive with pretty much in this film is he’s trying to go after racism versus prejudice.

Right. Is it systematically formatted that a white, this straight male or what, however you say it, that the system’s created for him, or is it that there’s just prejudice within individuals? And I think that’s a philosophy, a philosophical way of going about it where they’re, they try to stretch the whole film and they kind of say it at the end like, hey, you know, we all like, you know, there’s a few times where he talks about the guys are like, you know, we all bleed the same. You know, when they go to that little hick bar where they’re talking to the one fellow, Pat, who is hilarious because he’s drunk as and he’s smoking a cigarette, he’s like, where I have a black friend, he says all, all the things that, you know, usually come up as a joke.

The guy actually says it and he’s not joking. Yeah, he’s not at all. And if you see him, he’s more than serious. And it kind of just struggs on the heartstrings of conservatives. I think not heartstrings necessarily, but their biased where they already think like, yeah, you know, we’re, we’re all the same. So you’re not getting any new material. But it is to me, the deep dive is really on systematic racism versus prejudiced. Well, I would say the deep dive might actually be the question of the movie. Am I racist or is Matt Walsh racist? So what do you think if you had to answer that question after seeing this movie? Do you think Matt Walsh is racist? No, I think he’s a little prejudiced maybe, but I don’t think he’s racist.

Okay, that’s, that’s a fair point. I don’t know where I’m at. I, I wanted to come out of the gate and be like, yeah, of course he’s racist, but if, if we’re gonna split hairs and separate racism from prejudice, he doesn’t do anything outwardly. In the course of this movie, if you go in not knowing who Matt Walsh is, you might want to come out and be like, yeah, he’s a racist. Because he was kind of making fun of all these people that are, you know, quote unquote, anti racist. He doesn’t do anything racist in the movie itself.

So I can’t make the claim that he is in fact racist. But there is a pretty interesting thing that he brings up for anyone that hasn’t even contemplated this question. Maybe it just turns you off, maybe it offends you, maybe you already think that you know the answer. But towards the end he hosts, after he gets his DEI certification, he hosts his own little convention where people have to pay and go and figure out if they’re racist. And he’s just trying to show you how easy this grift is to pick up and perpetuate. But he also shows the limits of certain people are willing to go to.

For example, he stands up. The first thing he says in this room Full of people they just paid in order to, like, find out, you know, more about racism. And he goes, I want everyone to point at who they think the biggest racist in this room is right now, right? And there’s a couple people that are just like, this is not for me. They just stand up and immediately leave because clearly they. They weren’t there for that particular sort of experience. And he twisted around and he points at himself and he’s like, anyone that didn’t immediately point at yourself, you’ve got some work to do, right? Like, it was kind of funny the way that he.

He went about this, but he. He does show, like, in a very practical sense. And he also shows that he’s getting invited onto national television stations and promoting this course that he’s doing all the way to the end, where that almost is this little mini narrative of this rising star of a white guy that’s learning how to check his privilege and then telling other white people how to do it, to where he loses all faith in his own movement. And he goes on this final television interview that’s actually on, like, a live, you know, daily broadcast somewhere as this, like, fake Persona that Matt Walsh came up with.

And every time they ask him questions, he’s like, I don’t even know anymore. I think I am right. I think this is all pointless. I think this is just a big grift. And he just, like, kind of like, gets up and walks off camera. So there’s a narrative that he kind of presents with that. But I would say that that that is the claim, is Matt Walsh racist? And in his course, he kind of puts everyone on this sliding scale. It’s not a yes or no, it’s a zero to 10. And a whole bunch of people get up and they put themselves at like, 2 or 3 where it’s like, okay, maybe a little bit.

No one puts their name right at zero. No one says, I am zero percent racist. And I think out of anything that might be the most intriguing claim that’s in. Indirectly made by this movie is that not a single person that I remember said that they were completely 0% racist. They all said I was I. At least 10% or at least 20%. So I don’t know if. If the question is framed in that way, then, yeah, Matt. Matt Walsh is racist, but maybe it’s only like 10 or 20%. Yeah, yeah, he’s. He’s on the lower scale, only 20%.

I think what holds up is the scam, you know, that we already know about is a lot of these anti racism studies and seminars are basically just that scams where, you know, hey, pay 30 grand and then we’re gonna just tell you what a piece of you are and how are. And it’s your fault and there’s nothing you can do about it because it exposes that not only do they want to profit off of you, but they give you zero solutions. They’re like, well, what if I do this? Because some of the questions that he asked during the film, he’s even though he’s mocking them, he’s pushing like, well, what? How do we fix this? Like that one point they ask him like, you know, you have the seeds of racism in you.

And he’s like, well, how do I get him out? And they’re like, well, you don’t. Ripples and waves. The historical and cultural impact. I think the main impact this had culturally was on the conservative crowds. A lot of Trump people were loving this when it came out. It was his pretty. Not a sequel, but kind of a sequel to his what is a Woman? It’s his sequel of the DEI and this whole woke agenda. And I think that it was significant in dividing people more. You know what I mean? Because a lot of the people that are divided more, that are not on that side, they didn’t watch it.

But just the fact that seeing some of the clips that came out and making a mockery and I’m sure like people like Robin d’ Angelo at some point saw herself in there and I, I’m assuming they had assigned something right to be into these, this film. So I’m sure they weren’t too happy and I think it made them more mad and kind of split people. But it was very, very viral for a while when this movie came out, it was everywhere. Yeah, I would say that the cultural relevance or the impact of this makes in the long term is probably more that it shows that a theatrical release of this kind of movie is viable.

I believe it was profitable. It got enough reviews and PR campaigns associated with it that it’s probably going to be the first of a few in a series of this. This seems like the Daily Wire dipping their toe into this other format of movie mockumentary angle where you are kind of just getting their political bias wrapped up in a new package. Right. One that you can laugh at a little bit. Although it also represents maybe a gap in the market. So I would, I would say there’s strong evidence that maybe the movie itself, the content of the movie isn’t super relevant.

It’s not going to change anybody’s mind. It’s not going to start a movement anywhere. But the fact that they’re showing a commercially viable way of repackaging some of these political beliefs that I believe is a huge sort of change in the tides here. Yeah. Kind of switching it up on everybody. Like maybe we’ll see like a Trayvon hoax, but a little bit with. With even more humor. If Joel. I hope not. Yeah, because Joel is. Humor is a little bit out there. Time for Sink or Swim. What you got on this one? Sink or Swim? For me, this one is probably going to be a sink.

And maybe it’s. It’s my fault. I think I’m the one that also suggested this one, thinking that it kind of counted as a documentary. But after watching it again for the purposes of this show, I realized maybe it’s not a traditional documentary in that way. It’s about something that they’re telling the truth. It’s almost like a reference movie where they’re not just making jokes. Everything they’re doing in here is just trying to paint something very absurd. It’s almost like watching an episode of the Daily show or the Colbert Report or, you know, God help me. If you’ve ever seen more than a few hours of the Steven Crowder show, this is kind of like a Steven Crowder skit stretched out to be about an hour and a half.

So if you’ve ever seen a Steven Crowder skit ever, you’ve already seen Am I Racist? Right. So I would say on the scale for documentaries, not for how entertained I was or not production quality, but for a documentary. This one sings for me. It is. It is as shallow as you can get, yet is async. Same sink. For me, it was super entertaining. It made me laugh. You know, I laugh at a lot of stuff. It. I was able to watch it. It’s not a terrible movie, but it’s not a documentary. It’s not something that you’re gonna be like, oh, this no insight, recycled material.

It’s a lot of little sketches within it. Like when he gets did like you said, the. He gets his DD DEI certification and then he’s just walking around like, hey, you need a DEI guy, because I’m a DI guy. And like, you know, there’s some funny moments, but it really doesn’t add up. And then they. It has mix of sketches mixed with mockery, mixed with some overextended, over produced scenes. Like, especially at the end where you can tell, like at first you’re like, this is not a real scene. These are paid actors. It’s not real enough, you know what I mean? To be a documentary.

There’s not really diving into anything. They’re just kind of poking fun at the woke people, which we all do already. And I. I would suggest that there’s way funnier stuff on YouTube, tick tock. Almost any podcast that talks about this stuff than what’s in the film. It’s cool, but it sinks. If. If your parents are slightly racist, then they’ll probably love this movie. That’s kind of a weird way to look at it, but yeah, Boomer humor for sure. All right, that does it for us at under the Docks. But look out for the next three. Conspiracy of Silence, America, Freedom to Fascism, and A Noble Lie.

We’re going to keep continuing this trend of kind of connecting these documentaries that kind of fit together. So it’s a. More of a story outline for you guys. And. And I feel that these first nine are a decent representation of conspiracy theory. We haven’t watched every single conspiracy documentary out there, but we’ve given a good little sampling. So maybe after these next three, we’ll get into more mainstream ones and more like, niche topics. But, yeah, look out for these next three, because I do think all three of them are incredibly important for you to check out.

Yeah, for sure. I think this is the. The next set of the foundation. We had the pillars. Now we’re kind of putting up the drywall. All right, tune in the next one, guys. Peace Sa.
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