The Daily Wire’s new “Am I racist?” documentary brings light to another cultural lie.
In one pivotal scene, Robin DiAngelo, author and expert in “whiteness studies,” is challenged by Matt Walsh after he pulls out his wallet to pay cash reparations to his Black friend Ben, who’s part of the film crew. Caught in a moment of obligatory transparency, DiAngelo grabs her purse to offer Ben some cash too.
DiAngelo, who accepted $15,000 for the interview, has profited from her whiteness by telling other Caucasians to feel badly about themselves. Interestingly, just prior to the Sept. 13 release of the film, she and several other key interviewees — “caught” on camera after agreeing to be highlighted — deleted their X accounts. It’s not unreasonable to ask why they didn’t research the interviewer before accepting the money.
While I don’t agree with everything Walsh does or says, and I understand that injustices have happened to people in our nation’s history — and our world’s, for that matter — I’m with him in strongly questioning the effectiveness of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) charade, just as I cheered the premise of his earlier documentary, “What is a Woman?”
For both films, I found genius in Walsh handily leading the “enlightened” voices of academia into revealing their own inconsistencies, but even more, in the conversations with salt-of-the-earth folks, who prioritize things like feeding their families and living in the real world.
My thoughts on racism originate and have grown from being rooted among the Native peoples of northeast Montana. Through experience and a long observation, I’ve come to see racism not about skin color but culture. And when cultures come together, we must work extra hard to seek the humanity in one another as a first principle.
In my childhood, I learned how naturally children do this, but it’s a lifetime endeavor to try to understand and learn from the best in each other, no matter the distinctions. Justice comes most assuredly through recalling our sameness rather than our differentness.
Most DEI efforts today are trying to fill a moral void, but it won’t work, because they emphasize separation above unity, and those who’ve truly been victimized stay stuck in that state with no way out.
An effective solution does exist, and his name is Jesus. In the fullness of time, he came to draw attention to our hateful, prideful ways of being and show us a better path. Though we’ve often misapplied his teachings, we’ve gotten a lot right as well. Christianity rightly understood and modeled corrects the ills of injustice.
The abortion culture provides another example of how thoroughly we’ve gotten off track, yet many individuals are working to remove the veil of deception in this realm, too. Today, at 3 p.m. at Triumph Lutheran Church in Moorhead, the Lutherans for Life will host a panel of women who regret their abortions at their annual dessert banquet featuring homemade pies. The free, open-to-all event will include an opportunity for donations for life-affirming ministries.
[For the sake of having a repository for my newspaper columns and articles, I reprint them here, with permission, a week after their run date. The preceding ran in The Forum newspaper on Sept. 29, 2024.]
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