With his new movie Am I Racist?, Matt Walsh has pulled off an impressive coup in getting several prominent DEI thought leaders to consent to interviews. Going into the exchange, they were under the impression that Matt was a DEI ally who was creating a documentary that would be sympathetic to their cause. In true Borat fashion, after baiting them, Matt  draws them into discussions that, to say the least, do not paint them in a favorable light.

Using their own words, Matt was able to expose them as the delusional grifters that they are.

However, not to detract from Matt’s achievement, it is truly a marvelously entertaining movie, I have seen a version of it play out before me in the past. Back in 2020, I ran my own Borat-like experiment. In emails to several DEI officials in schools embroiled in controversy, I portrayed myself as a sympathetic party to their plight. I started by applauding their efforts to address past and present inequities involving institutional racism in their respective schools. I portrayed myself as a former black alumnus of the school who had experienced racism first-hand within the walls of that institution. This played into their Atticus Finch complex. Every DEI official romanticizes themselves in front of that fictional Southern courthouse, standing up to the belligerent mob hellbent on lynching an innocent black man.

All of them responded with a note of sympathy and understanding of how terrible the  environment must have been at their respective schools in the 1990s. Next, in true Borat  fashion, I roped them in further by recounting fictional moments from my school days. I told them about the time that I overheard a teacher call a fellow black student the n-word or another time when a teacher gave me an F on an essay because it did not match with her impression of a black kid’s writing skill, and she suspected that someone else authored it. I continued by relating a story of when I found an old post card of the lynching of a black man stuck inside my math book and another time when my family found a noose hanging on a tree limb in our front yard. I continued by stating that troubles for my family did not end there. My younger brother had a football scholarship to Ohio State rescinded after being stopped by a racist cop and accused of an earlier liquor store robbery. Saddest of all, my youngest sister would often come home from school and break down in tears. She never confided in me about what was upsetting her, but I believe whatever it was contributed to her becoming a crack addict and homeless.

I would have thought that after seeing this litany of tired clichés about black people, they  would have called my bluff but none of them did. In fact, many would respond stating that it was because of stories like mine that they entered their profession. I have no doubt that most of them felt that way. This connects back to Matt Walsh’s success in convincing these prominent DEI leaders to be interviewed and then drawing them into conversations that exposed them as imbeciles and frauds. They live very insulated lives... away from reality. They live amongst friends and colleagues that reinforce their worldview. They rarely question or venture forth to see if it has any validity. They are very gullible people who hang out with other gullible people like themselves. I like to think that in a less affluent society, they would not have the luxury of allowing themselves to be so thoroughly deluded. On the other hand, self-deception may be baked into the human condition. We tell ourselves stories that not only define our view of the world but also our view of ourselves.

Image: YouTube video screen grab.