Episode 99: Am I A Racist? Reviewed

We review Matt Walsh's new documentary uncovering the DEI movement in the United States. 'Am I a Racist?' looks at race relations specifically, and the self-help, grief counselling, Protestant evangelical culture found within the workshops he attends. There is a pessimism at the heart of these DEI sessions, one that has a wider context in capitalist realism, afro-pessimism, and Victorian morality. The function of pessimism here is about proposing a foreclosure of systemic change or reorganising society in a meaningful way to end racism, so that instead people individually 'do the work' through self-flagellation and quasi-psychological deconstruction. That sets up the lucrative grift of DEI workshops or events as the only activity someone can attend to be anti-racist, rather than focusing on political action. Individualistic measures become the ceiling of what one can do to defeat racism. Plus, Derrida's 'reiteration' theory, women's loyalty to men as highly racialised, the red flags of coercive workshops, and a prediction of land acknowledgements happening even in Israel some day. At the end of the episode we discuss some of the damage done by vegan activists to indigenous communities in the north of Canada.