One aspect of “Am I Racist?” that has yet to receive any attention is how closely it aligns with the apologetic style of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.
Although the conservative provocateur Matt Walsh tried to go for something different with his new documentary Am I Racist?, it’s impossible not to see the film as a kind of sequel to his first documentary, What Is a Woman? True, in this one he dons a wig and becomes a certified DEI expert to go undercover, and the tone is more comedic, but the overall structure and purpose are the same. He interviews a mix of experts and average Americans to shed light on a particular social movement and reveals its many absurdities in the process.
It’s an effective and often hilarious formula, but making use of it once again inevitably causes viewers to compare the two documentaries. In this case, most viewers would likely admit that What Is a Woman? is better overall since it covered more ground (both in a literal and topical sense), went deeper with the arguments, and felt more authentic and original. More importantly, it was released right as gender ideology was reaching a fever pitch around the globe.
By contrast, Am I Racist? already feels a little dated, going after people and ideas that have long since fallen out of fashion. Moreover, Walsh seems more modest in his ambitions, mainly focusing on the kooky antiracist strain of DEI rather than taking on the movement as a whole. He takes it as a given that the antiracist argument—that reverse racism against whites and imposing an intersectional hierarchy in every institution is the only way to counteract the implicit racism of the West—is absurd and simply takes it to its absurd conclusions.
Overall, Am I Racist? might rightly end the careers of the few people still turning a profit off of white guilt, but that’s about it.
Or is it?
One aspect of Am I Racist? that has yet to receive any attention, and which might make it a better film in some ways than What Is a Woman? is how closely it aligns with the apologetic style of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Walsh does more than pose questions and debate the antiracists; he learns their ways, adopts their nomenclature, and becomes one of them—or as they would put it, he “does the work.” This allows him not only to expose their hypocrisy and idiocy, but also to understand how they are exploiting modern society’s spiritual vulnerabilities.
In Lewis’ classic, Screwtape is a wise devil who works in one of the central offices of Hell and writes a series of letters advising his nephew Wormwood on how to tempt his assigned soul away from “the Enemy” (God). Most notably, in his first letter he discourages Wormwood from planting atheistic arguments in his host since it will cause him to start thinking, which is antithetical to the project of damnation: “The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy’s own ground.” The goal, according to Screwtape, is to keep people locked in the realms of the senses and feelings instead of the intellect.
Similarly, it becomes clear from the outset of Am I Racist? that the typical antiracist charlatan discourages thinking and exclusively works off the participant’s feelings. Early in the film, Walsh attends an antiracist workshop where the leader first asks her audience to meditate before they share their deepest experiences with racism. Additionally, if any of the attendees feels the need to cry, they are invited to go to a separate room down the hall.
Even as Walsh makes light of the whole meeting, it’s remarkable how little actual reasoning figures into these meetings. Instead of claims and evidence, the workshop leader offers quiet time and cry rooms. It’s entirely therapeutic.
This interaction sets Walsh on “an antiracist journey.” Like Wormwood learning the ways of an effective tempter, Walsh learns the ways of an effective grifter, which indeed amounts to shutting out nearly all forms of rationality. It’s “vibes” all the way down—which is probably why liberal white women and effeminate men make up the great majority of antiracist activists.
Eventually, Walsh ends up leading an antiracist workshop of his own, delivering the same slogans and playing off the guilt of his audience. What leads him to stop the workshop and wrap up the movie is when he realizes just how far his “students” will let him go (which may or may not involve literal self-flagellation). As he indicates in the final scenes of the film and in various interviews, he becomes far more depressed than amused by the end of the whole project.
Lewis came to the same conclusion with The Screwtape Letters. Sure, he and his reader can laugh at the idea of demon bureaucrats talking shop, but behind the laughter is the uncomfortable truth that so many souls are lost because of these tactics. At a certain point, Lewis simply had to stop writing because the darkness of the subject matter became excessive.
Fortunately, both The Screwtape Letters and Am I Racist? carry solutions that are found in the Christian faith. While this is implicit in Lewis’ book as he employs reverse psychology to make a positive case for the faith, the message is more subtle in Walsh’s movie. In between some of the more outrageous scenes are interviews with some of the average people on the street. It’s evident in these conversations that the claims of antiracism (i.e., America is systemically racist, there is an intersectionality hierarchy, beware of microaggressions, etc.) have little traction with the Christians. They don’t seem to feel the same level of guilt and shame as those on the secular left, and they rightly point out that Walsh’s antiracist pose is divisive and contradictory.
Nor do they seem to have the same desire to become rich and/or famous by preaching the gospel of antiracism. They recognize that such is a path to nihilism. Yet this is all quite visible in Walsh’s interviews with DEI experts who betray a deep-seated sadness despite their success. None of them have a sense of humor, and many of them are noticeably uncomfortable answering the most basic questions. Either they know what they espouse is nonsense, or they believe the nonsense and feel consequently empty.
In this way, antiracism has much in common with other leftist ideologies. All of them fill a vacuum that has been left by a de-Christianized, liberalized, relativized West—something Lewis saw long ago. Which is why, if he wanted, Walsh could crank out documentaries on environmentalism, socialism, feminism, occultism, transhumanism, or any other trend, repeating the same approach.
As Chesterton famously said, “A man who won’t believe in God will believe in anything.” Walsh has discovered that this reality provides more than enough material for amusement as well as a sober warning to those seeking salvation in a post-Christian future. Rather than finding truth and empowerment, these restless souls will find endless confusion and a poorly disguised Matt Walsh ready to make a fool out of them.
Author: Auguste Meyrat
Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher and department chair in north Texas. He has a BA in Arts and Humanities from University of Texas at Dallas and an MA in Humanities from the University of Dallas.