Opinion

You might not enjoy ‘Am I Racist?’ You should watch it anyway.

Rather, it was reminding me that I had tickets for the latest movie by Matt Walsh, a conservative podcaster and provocateur who is probably most famous for his film “What Is a Woman?” That movie apparently did well enough to justify releasing the new one onto about 1,500 screens this month. It was No. 4 at the box office (albeit a distant fourth in a very slow week), which is why I was going to see it.

While you might not like this suggestion, you should do the same.

I’m not promising you’ll enjoy the movie. If you’re on the liberal-to-progressive side, you will think it is simplistic and unfair, which, yes, obviously. But it’s also effective, and people on that end of the spectrum should watch it to understand why it works — and why the left keeps providing Walsh such a rich trove of targets.

The movie’s conceit is that Walsh is concerned he is racist and trying to “do the work.” (This column will contain spoilers, starting with: He is not sincere.) In a deadpan parody of a self-flagellating White progressive, often wearing a ridiculously obvious wig, he interviews diversity experts, attends antiracist events and eventually sets up his own diversity workshop. Unsurprisingly, many of his targets are painted as grifters, demagogues or well-meaning morons. Interspersed are more sympathetic figures, White and Black, trying to convince this caricature that race doesn’t actually matter very much.

If you don’t like the people he’s lampooning, it’s easy to convince yourself that he’s revealing something deep and important, just as I’ve heard progressives argue that “Borat” movies were laying bare the hateful underbelly of America. But what Walsh is actually revealing is two not-very-surprising realities of human nature: First, that every group has an awful fringe, and it’s easy to make that group look bad if only the fringe’s worst moments survive the cutting-room floor. Second, that the human instinct for avoiding confrontation is exploitable if you’re sufficiently willing to violate the social contract.

Both points have already been amply demonstrated by a long history of cults and dictatorships, not to mention middle school.

Yet to give Walsh his due, it’s still jaw-dropping when participants in his ersatz diversity workshop sit silently, or even participate, as he berates a sick-looking elderly man in a wheelchair for being a racist. Walsh eventually stops the workshop when it seems as though they’re actually considering flagellating themselves with the whips he’s passing out.

At every point, his targets are visibly uncomfortable with his exaggerated behavior and strange ideas. But our instinct for avoiding confrontation is almost overwhelming, which both leaves us vulnerable to manipulation and keeps us from killing each other over trivia. If possible, we try to sidestep people who misbehave, not change them.

That’s especially true among America’s genteel upper middle class, who have an unusual ability to engineer their lives away from people who are annoying, antisocial or just plain weird. Many of the most embarrassing moments come in situations — small groups in small rooms — where it’s hard to get up and leave without causing a scene.

Some people are willing to do so anyway: A number of the people attending his workshop walk out as the strangeness escalates, and earlier in the film, he gets kicked out of a workshop that someone else runs. But that happens only after he leaves the room, giving participants time to figure out who he is and reach consensus on expelling him. Mostly people sit through his provocations because, well, it would be rude to leave or point out how bizarre his suggestions are.

That itself is telling, however, because some of his targets are also exploiting those same conciliatory social instincts. Which is what makes the movie’s jokes land. When progressive activist Saira Rao monologues about the awfulness of White women, to a group of White women at one of her “Race to Dinner” event, which reportedly cost up to $5,000 to stage, the faces of the guests foreshadow those of Walsh’s workshop participants: the frozen anxiety of someone witnessing a social offense and unwilling to return it in kind.

That’s also what you see on the face of celebrity diversity consultant Robin DiAngelo when a bewigged Walsh gives all his cash to a Black producer as “reparations” and invites DiAngelo to do the same. DiAngelo obviously thinks this is a bad idea, but even though she would later release a statement saying that the whole setup felt off, she clearly couldn’t figure out how to say no without pointing out that Walsh was behaving inappropriately. I dropped my head into my hands as DiAngelo went scurrying for her wallet, though I confess, I also laughed. Because you can’t help think of how many times DiAngelo has been paid for her advice on how White people ought to interact with people of color. And some of that advice is only slightly less bizarre and patronizing than suggesting we haul out our wallets and tip them $20.

DiAngelo and Rao and a number of others gained money and fame during the “Great Awokening” because decent people, genuinely concerned about America’s racial divides, were too polite to point out that they sounded like lunatics. Those well-intentioned Americans had their social instincts hacked, the machinery diverted into a continuous loop of unproductive navel-gazing, instead of the racial justice they were trying to achieve. That’s what left them vulnerable when Matt Walsh showed up to exploit the same bug.