Film Review: “Am I Racist?”

By Douglas Groothuis

The Daily Wire’s first theatrical release, Am I Racist?, asks a question worth pondering. It stars podcaster, author, producer, and provocateur Matt Walsh, who also starred in the 2022 documentary, What Is a Woman?[1] This time, Matt goes undercover by posing as a DEI expert to explore and expose the anti-racist or woke establishment. What he finds is not favorable to the cause, to put it mildly.

No one wants to be called a racist, but in order to avoid being one, you need to know what a racist actually is. I met a man who believed that some races were objectively inferior to others—he was in one of the favored races, of course—but even he didn’t want to be called a racist, but a “racialist.” But before reviewing the film, let us lay a foundation from the Bible.

Race in the Bible

Since all people from all countries at all times have been made in the image and likeness of God, and because the Bible allows for no racial hierarchy of value, each person should be esteemed as having unique and incomparable value. As the Apostle Paul preached: “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands” (Acts 17:26). Not only is there a unity of the human race, but there is a oneness in the Body of Christ, such that racial and ethnic differences should, in themselves, make no difference. To quote Paul again.

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:26-29).

Jesus crossed sexual, racial, and religious barriers by having a profound conversation with a Samaritan woman, the kind of person Jews would usually despise a priori and in principle (John 4). Therefore, of all people, Christians should be the least likely to dismiss or demean people because of race or ethnicity. We should likewise be the champions of those who have been disadvantaged because of race. We then must ask how this can be done. To answer that, we need accurate information (knowledge) on American racial history, on the state of race relations in America, and on what kinds of policies and individual actions are likely to help all Americans. America and even the church is divided on these matters as Voddie Baucham noted in Fault Lines: Social Justice and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe.[2] I have lost one friend over the issue, sadly.  

A False Ideology

Matt Walsh is on record with his podcast as opposing a view of race called critical race theory (CRT) or the “woke” viewpoint. The project is also called “anti-racism.” This is the philosophy behind programs to promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) and the phrase “social justice” usually has this idea in mind. This ideology is difficult to put into a nutshell. Not being fond of nutshells, I wrote a book about it called Fire in the Streets.[3] Let me summarize.

The woke perspective claims that society is divided decisively by racial and gender groups. (Am I Racist? only pertains to racial issues, although Walsh’s previous film, What Is a Woman? addresses gender.) Any discrepancies of social outcomes between whites and non-whites or people of color (POC) are attributed to racism by whites against POC. In fact, this racism is “systemic,” meaning it is baked into the system to automatically insure injustices against POC. On this view, all whites are racist since they benefit unfairly from the system. If any individual white person claims to not have racist thoughts and feelings, this is proof that they are trying to hide them or that they exist in their subconscious minds.

This ideology rejects the “color blind” approach of the civil rights movement which sought to legally ensure that people would not be discriminated against by skin color. Instead, the goal was equality of opportunity. CRT, on the other hand, deems the American system corrupt and incapable of delivering justice on this basis. Instead, pre-set outcomes of social achievement must be arranged by DEI. So, if thirteen percent of Americans are African American, then thirteen percent of all pilots, dentists, lawyers, surgeons, and engineers must be African American. This was previously known as a “quota system.” This account disregards all the non-racist factors leading to discrepant outcomes, which are considerable, as Thomas Sowell has shown in Discrimination and Disparities.[4] Meritocracy is rejected as favoring whites and objective qualifications for positions are jettisoned as racist. As I have argued in Fire in the Streets, this view is incompatible with a biblical view of justice, incompatible with historic American ideals, and is not a way forward for racial minorities in America.

The Film

Now to the film Am I Racist? While a documentary, it uses unorthodox means to uncover information, which go beyond offering straightforward interviews or giving facts placed into a particular narrative. Matt instead pretends to be someone interested in going on a “journey” to discover the racist nature of America and what to do about it. He wants to do “the work” in exposing his own racism and that of others as an ally. To that end, he dons skinny jean, different glasses, and a wig that includes a man bun. However, he presents himself as “Matt” most of the time. While undercover, Matt receives instruction from a DEI trainer and receives an online certification as a DEI Instructor, which he mentions to several people with pride while flashing his official card. But two scenes steal the show.

Two women, one white, one black, offer an expensive service called “Race2Dinner,” during which they speak during a catered dinner to only eight white women for two hours about how racist all whites are. Somehow, Matt is able to gain footage of one of these events. Since Matt, as a white man, could not participate, he serves as a waiter who horns in on the conversations The white woman says America is “a piece of crap,” that “Republicans are Nazis,” and that white women cannot separate themselves from racism. Matt invites himself to sit down at the table to agree with the leaders, although this annoys them. At the end, he proposes and is joined in a toast to racism.

For another scene, Matt poses as a DEI instructor who wants to do the work in his journey to woke awareness. He secures an interview with Robin DiAngelo, author of the best-selling book White Fragility, and a leading light in CRT circles. Matt entices Robin to role-play a situation in which a black man is bothered that Robin, a white woman, smiles too much at him. She apologizes and says she won’t smile next time. But Matt retorts that not smiling means the black man isn’t being seen and recognized. Robin agrees. This means that anything can be interpreted as racism, thus rendering the idea meaningless.

But the crowning blow is struck when Matt calls in his producer, Ben, who is African American. Since Robin believes that blacks should receive reparations from whites because of historic injustices, Matt asks her if she is willing to directly give Ben money. At first, she says that this isn’t “systemic” enough, but Matt says she should not wait for the system to catch up. Matt ponies up a few dollars, which inspires Robin to go to her purse to retrieve cash, which she gives to Ben, who said he never turns down cash.  

On the other side, Matt goes to a biker bar where he is met with credulity or hostility when he speaks of “decentering whiteness” and “systemic racism.” He also interviews an older immigrant from Africa who loves America, says he only reads the Bible, and offers an answer to racial problems: we need to love one another. The message is that ordinary Americans are either unaffected by woke ideology or oppose it.

I could describe other scenes, which are telling and often funny, but suffice to say that Walsh and his team insinuated themselves into deeply woke settings to let the advocates speak for themselves. What they say reveals an ideology that is unpleasant, untrue, and unhelpful for racial harmony and social progress. Walsh’s deadpan in his interactions with the woke proponents is remarkable as is his skill in backing them into corners, especially DiAngelo. Walsh’s take is that these race gurus are really “grifters,” whose ideology is empty but whose pockets are full of the money they gain through their services.

The Morality of the Filming

While I generally concur with Walsh’s judgments on woke ideology and the grifter nature of some of its leading proponents, and while I admire the shrewdness required to film many of the scenes, I question the moral legitimacy of some of his strategies. Walsh admits that his team lied to DiAngelo, claiming they were making an anti-racist documentary called “Shades of Justice.” They got her to sign off for an interview and paid her $15,000 for it. Matt presented himself as “Matt” and wore his thinly applied disguise, mentioned above. He pretended to be someone he wasn’t, a sympathetic ally, who wanted to know more.

This deceptive strategy violates the golden rule, as stated by Jesus: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12). Walsh would not want woke documentarians lying to Daily Wire staff in order to get undercover interviews. If so, he has violated the golden rule of Jesus, as well as lying. Apparently, the film does not distort what the woke advocates said, but some of the footage was gained under false pretenses.

On his podcast, Walsh defends himself against moral condemnation by saying that he endeavors to do more than just talk about issues. He wants to win the culture war by exposing wokeness for what it is. If that takes deception, so be it. Some people, he claims, do not deserve the truth, given how despicable they are. For Walsh, the seriousness of our cultural moment—given the ill effects of DEI policies and the falsehood of CRT ideology overall—justifies deception. He ended this podcast by cancelling all his Christian critics—who would otherwise agree with his critique—who raised this moral issue. Is he correct?

Some people do not deserve the truth and Scripture does not condemn all deception as sin. When Rahab lied to protect God’s spies from death, she did the right thing. “By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient” (Hebrews 11:31; see Joshua 1). Her welcoming of the spies included her lying to protect them (although some want to split hairs here, saying her faith was commended, not her lying). Further, the Hebrew midwives lied to save the lives of Jewish babies and were blessed by God for doing so (Exodus 1:15-21). Nevertheless, lying was necessary to save innocent lives in these cases. Walsh cannot make that claim for the deception he used to gain some of his footage. In his defense, Walsh also alluded to the deception used in sting operations made by the police and the information gained by Live Action about Planned Parenthood selling fetal body parts. But that situation revealed potential lawbreaking, which is more serious than false ideology.

We should not deny the seriousness of the moral issues that divide America, whether pertaining to race, gender, abortion, or immigration. But if we are to fight a “culture war,” we need to fight fairly, and to take the moral high ground. We need to be “wise as serpents, but innocent as doves” as Jesus said (Matthew 10:16). In Am I Racist? Walsh engages in a guerilla warfare approach to journalism. It is terribly clever, often hilarious, and it exposes the falseness and even absurdity of a bogus ideology. Nevertheless, some of the strategies employed are morally unjustifiable and do not serve as a model for Christian social commentary or for social action.

Notes

[1] See Douglas Groothuis, “Defining the Meaning of ‘Woman’: A Review of Matt Walsh’s Documentary Film and Book, What Is a Woman?” Christian Research Journal, volume 45, number 2/3  (2022), https://www.equip.org/articles/defining-the-meaning-of-woman-review-of-matt-walshs-documentary-film-and-book-what-is-a-woman.

[2] Voddie Baucham, Fault Lines: Social Justice and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe (Washington, DC: Salem Books, 2021).

[3] Douglas Groothuis, Fire in the Streets (Washington, DC: Salem Books, 2022). See also Owen Strachan, Christianity and Wokeness: How the Social Justice Movement Is Hijacking the Gospel (Washington, DC: Regnery Faith, 2024). 

[4] Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities (New York: Basic Books, 2019).

— Douglas Groothuis is University Research Professor of Apologetics and Christian Worldview at Cornerstone University and is the author of twenty books, including, most recently, Beyond the Wager: The Christian Brilliance of Blaise Pascal (InterVarsity-Academic, 2024) and Christian Apologetics, 2^nd ed. (InterVarsity-Academic, 2022).

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