Are you racist? 

I recently had the chance — thanks to my friend and KNUS-AM morning host Jeff Hunt — to attend a sneak peek of the new film “Am I Racist?” produced by the conservative media outlet The Daily Wire. The film, which has several Colorado connections — including that director Justin Folk lives here — is a brilliant, fact-laden send up of the intellectually flaccid and increasingly rejected Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) consulting industry. 

The film bills itself as a “comedy documentary,” and it is both. It is indeed hilarious, but it also takes a deeply serious look at the tissue-thin substance, and often howling hypocrisy, behind very expensive consulting and training programs. The movie shows numerous examples of naïve and compliant liberal white people who line up like docile sheep to be shorn of their unconscious, inherent biases.  

Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire goes undercover, having become a “certified” DEI trainer by completing a flimsy online course, and then proceeds to build a DEI consulting practice. This includes securing media appearances across the country and interviewing, on camera, some of the luminaries of the “anti-racist” industry. 

Here’s the key point of the film: all the interviews are with real people who buy into Walsh’s faux man bun. 

One of Walsh’s sojourns to “discover” his inherent racism takes him to the Boulder Book Store, where — not surprisingly — there is an entire section of the store devoted to “anti-racism” books. A clerk is seen toting a two-foot stack of books toward the register.

Stay up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

Among the most hilarious, and important, sections of the film is the undercover Walsh interviewing (for a five-figure appearance fee) Robin DiAngelo, the author of the mega best seller “White Fragility.” Let’s just say that Walsh does a deft job not only exposing the contradictory nature of DiAngelo’s contentions, he also exposes her utter hypocrisy.   

There is a ton of jaw-dropping scenes in “Am I Racist?” 

We are taken to a group dinner convened by Race2Dinner where white participants apparently pay upward of $5,000 to spend the evening being badgered to expose their white privilege and inherent racial bias. 

One of the anti-racist hosts, Saira Rao, declares all Republicans “are Nazis” and “this country is a piece of (excrement)” as well asl “this country is not worth saving.”

They hate your country. But they are happy capitalists, profiteering in fleecing the gullible, giving them the DEI training imprimatur in a haze of intellectually thin psychobabble. 

More and more companies, having spent millions to stand up DEI staffs, host trainings and make soul-cleansing charitable contributions to woke organizations, are realizing their customers, investors and their own employees think this is unproductive bunk. Ford, John Deere, Tractor Supply Co., Lowe’s and others have publicly transitioned away from DEI. 

One of the concerns, unlike other business training programs, is there are few substantive, measurable outcomes from the whole superstructure of DEI programming and training.

This is nothing new for many Colorado communities. For example, in 2021 Douglas County School District was happy to spend $37,000 on a DEI consulting firm but when parents concerned about weak, woke curricula got wind of it and raised a ruckus, the contract was cancelled. Imagine what $37,000 could buy for classrooms in a district constantly telling taxpayers it is strapped for cash.

In fact, if the DEI warriors really wanted to improve equity outcomes, they would focus not on grievance politics, but on doing the much harder work of addressing the serious inequities in education and crime, for example, that too often disproportionately affect communities of color. Yet they want to shut charter schools that can be a lifeline for minority kids. Or they coddle criminals but have little compassion on the urban neighborhoods where life becomes more dangerous and unlivable. 

It’s way easier to create fuzzy feel-good consulting programs that give guilt-laden white people a day of shame, and an anti-racist certificate. Then pull down a statue or two on your way to the bank.

Go see “Am I Racist?,” which opens in theaters on Friday. It will make you laugh. It will make you ask tough questions. And, regardless of your race, it should make you mad as Walsh, Folk and team expose an industry they refer to as “one giant grift.”

Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens, is a communications and media relations strategist and ghostwriter based in the Denver area.