Luxury Beliefs 101: Am I Racist? Movie Review

I was embarrassed to watch this movie but I did it anyways.

I recognized the Cinemark employee checking my ticket as a former boy scout in my sons' BSA troop. I smiled and quickly walked away from our brief conversation. I was late meeting my friends but I was also nervous he would ask me what movie I was watching.

At the invitation of a friend, I watched Matt Walsh's Am I Racist? movie on opening night. I was nervous throughout most of the movie. I kept glancing around afraid someone would recognize me and label me an alt-right alpha male. I also wondered what my progressive friends would think of me watching this movie.

Am I Racist? is a mockumentary. It's not meant to persuade anyone. You come into this movie having already been convinced one way or another. If you don't already see the cognitive errors of the anti-racist industry, this movie will not help you see them. If you already see them, then this movie is the perfect echo chamber and hit piece for those that do.

I joined three friends for the viewing: two middle-aged white men and a twenty-something male of mixed racial descent. The older two men were immensely entertained and one in particular, laughed out loud on a number of occasions. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'm never ashamed of publicly consuming progressive content. After all, this is the culture I swim in.

The movie's climatic scene is Walsh's interview with Robin DiAngelo, the famed author of White Fragility. There's a trolling moment where Walsh asks DiAngelo for her definition of mansplaining and then interrupts her and corrects her definition. Walsh closes the interview by trapping her in her own illogic. It's both hilarious and painful to watch. I think she knows she's being led to the slaughter.

After the movie, I told my friend that the appeal of the anti-racism industry is a special type of virtue signaling. Antiracism, in the language of Rob Henderson, the author of Troubled, is a luxury belief. Luxury beliefs are "ideas held by privileged people that make them look good but actually harm the marginalized". Anti-racism is luxury belief 101. It invokes the binary ideology of oppressor and victim. It's what Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff describe in Coddling of the American Mind as the third great untruth: life is a battle between good people and evil people. In the movie, Walsh talks with an anti-racist educator about his racist uncle. The white woman gives advice about confronting the uncle and closes with "Your uncle is no good."

Movie critic Sasha Stone in this movie review appears to agree with me. Stone sees the shift in the anti-racism movement - "Suddenly, what was virtue signaling became, I believe, a religion." There are now books written about antiracism as religion here and here. Stone closes with this:

‘The “antiracist” movement has always struck me as a way to justify the extreme wealth inequality in this country. It’s a way to see the white working class as oppressors and a way for the most wealthy whites to continue to use their status as long as it’s defined by whether or not they are “good allies.”’

The friend who invited me felt outraged that 21st-century snake oil salespeople like DiAngelo can peddle their antiracist remedies and bilk individuals and corporations out of millions of dollars. I have no problem with Robin DiAngelo. She's hustling and stacking benjamins.

DiAngelo gives elites what we want - the opportunity to pay top dollar for a luxury belief. It allows elites to salve a guilty conscience about our wealth and most importantly, to join a higher, more enlightened level of elitehood because we've "done the work". A luxury belief is not a material possession like a Ferrari, fur coat, or Gerhard Richter painting. But you wear it the same way. At dinner parties, you show off terms like "heteronormativity" and "de-centering whiteness" like you'd show off diamond-studded earrings. You parade it on social media. You invoke all the right memes - "silence is violence". I've been there and I've done it.

In other words, you get exactly what you pay for. You purchase an item other people can't afford and better yet, you get to purchase an item that gains you entrance into a group you want to belong to. Luxury beliefs are tickets to elite status. And the more you pay, the greater the status.

I accept my embarrassment of being seen watching this movie. It's the price to pay for being a social being. I am susceptible to shame, I have a need to belong, and I am status-conscious. Because of this, luxury beliefs will always tempt me. I do regret aspects of my knee-jerk bandwagon participation to the George Floyd protests back in 2020. And yet I appreciate how the BLM movement paved the way for Stop AAPI Hate and as a culture, we're not going back to 2019.

The considerable backlash against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives is also evidence that mainstream society has caught on as well. If you want to see a movie that more effectively addresses the contradictions of antiracism, watch "American Fiction". It's a vastly superior and far more entertaining movie. It's also evidence that the problematic nature of the antiracist movement is much more mainstream than many conservatives want to acknowledge. Am I Racist? arrives about three years too late.

Recently, I talked with my cousin who works in student life at a large public university and like many of her peers at other colleges, she was baffled and exhausted by the student protest and cancel culture over the past academic year. I believe she, like many on the moderate left, would characterize the hyper-woke movement as illiberal and performative.

So what's my takeaway from watching this movie? First, popular culture can operate like the stock market. On any given day or month or season, the market can do crazy, irrational things. People will get caught up in a Gamestop trading frenzy or the latest antiracist book. But over time, cooler heads in a culture often prevail. The frenzies die off. And the people who drive these frenzies are often a tiny minority with a booming voice. It is crucial that we take time to evaluate the ideas that are going on. We don't have to succumb to the lie that we need to react instantly. Over time, the crowd may be right but the crowd's impulse on any given day is usually misguided. It requires wisdom to identify and root out a luxury belief. And wisdom takes time, a critical mind, an openness to new ideas, and a healthy dose of contrarianism - a willingness to go against the crowd.

Second, once we make an evaluation about ideas, we can treat both the ideas and people who hold them with sensitivity and respect. I agree with Walsh's critique but I object to his tone. He's just one more shrill voice in a cacophony of shrill voices. I hope this movie opens up dialogue in new places but understandably, most people don't want to listen to someone trolling them.