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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28316 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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The Washington Post and the WSJ have op-eds praising the mockumentary. Which is actually especially surprising, as the entertainment sections on their websites, at least as of now (I just checked), have not a review or any article about it.

WP: "You might not enjoy ‘Am I Racist?’ You should watch it anyway."
https://archive.ph/9J7Ch

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.

[…]

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.

WSJ: "Matt Walsh’s Hilarious New Film Asks: ‘Am I Racist?’"
https://archive.is/PMYka

An assessment of the DEI literature, published in the Harvard Business Review in 2012, was titled, “Diversity Training Doesn’t Work.” According to the article, one study of “829 companies over 31 years showed that diversity training had ‘no positive effects in the average workplace’ ” and that millions of dollars were spent annually on “training resulting in, well, nothing. Attitudes—and the diversity of the organizations—remained the same.”

Sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev reached a similar conclusion in a 2018 academic paper. They noted that “hundreds of studies dating back to the 1930s suggest that antibias training does not reduce bias, alter behavior or change the workplace.” According to the authors, “two-thirds of human resources specialists report that diversity training does not have positive effects, and several field studies have found no effect of diversity training on women’s or minorities’ careers or on managerial diversity.”

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.

Not having watched this film yet (I intend to at some point due to the generally positive reviews from across the political spectrum - I'm not particularly familiar with Walsh and have no interest in What is a Woman, though I've seen his name and face* on social media second hand), this sentence went a wildly different direction than I thought it would go based on what I'd heard of the film. What I would have written would have been something more like:

First, that every group has an awful fringe, and therefore it's incumbent on every group not to subvert their ability to discriminate against and excise this awful fringe, lest they empower that fringe and cause awfulness to happen.

Because one thing that's clear about the movements behind the types of activists that are being mocked in this film is that they subvert this ability in many ways, e.g. by valuing an argument based on the race of the arguer rather than the quality of the arguments, which have enabled both cynical grifters and naive true believers to form an awful fringe that gets glossed over at least and institutional backing at worst. It seems like the original sentence was meant to call out Walsh as acting badly by shining a light at this awful result of this incompetent-at-best/malicious-at-worst behavior by these movements rather than calling out the very things that caused the awful result in the first place.

The second part also has a somewhat similar phenomenon going on; exploiting the human instinct for avoiding confrontation was a major means by which these awful fringes became as popular and influential as they did, which is what even allowed Walsh to have content upon which to base this film in the first place.

* I gotta say, if I hadn't heard of Walsh before I saw his face, I would have guessed that his ideology was the exact opposite of what it actually seems to be. Which, I guess, probably made it a lot easier for him to blend in while filming this.

I gotta say, if I hadn't heard of Walsh before I saw his face, I would have guessed that his ideology was the exact opposite of what it actually seems to be. Which, I guess, probably made it a lot easier for him to blend in while filming this.

He literally disguised himself while filming this.

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