Discrimination In The Movie Crash

Many famous individuals of color in our history have hoped to one day live in a nation without the feeling of a segregation between different ethnicities. Unfortunately, these hopes have still not come to fruition in our society today. The United States is still rocked by the idea that one pigment of color is superior to another. This discrimination is the cause of a lack in education in our generation and an aversion to difference that has been passed down from our ancestors. The movie Crash, accurately depicts these problems that we have seen with racism in our country for the past hundred years and more abundantly today. In this essay, I will be discussing how the movie crash shows how media hides the fact that racism is multicultural,
Kim Lee assumes Ria is Mexican and in the movie she states that since Mexicans are not good drivers, it is detective Ria’s fault. Ria then mimics the way Kim Lee says “blake lights” (brake lights) and requests the detective put in his report that she was hit by an Asian driver. A later scene shows Ryan, a Caucasian officer, talking on a pay phone to Shaniqua Johnson, an African American HMO administrator, Ryan is upset because his father is sick and not receiving the care he believes he needs. When Shaniqua says there is nothing she can do because she is not a doctor, Ryan becomes irate and wants to talk to her supervisor, she explains that she is the supervisor and Ryan requests her name. After hearing her name is Shaniqua Johnson, Ryan hangs up. After joining his partner Hansen, a young Caucasian rookie, Ryan tells him the big company Shaniqua works for hires the “stupidest black people” they can find. From just these two scenes we see four different cultures engaging in discrimination against another. The media likes to make it look like only one ethnicity is responsible for most of the prejudices in the United States today. Sharon Davis in “The Oneness of Humanity: Healing Racism Today” argues “that not only White people can be racists. Given the same history and circumstances, any group of human beings may behave in similar ways” (citation). What Davis is saying is that white people are
In one scene in the movie we see two young African American males, Anthony and Peter. In this scene Anthony and Peter are leaving an Italian restaurant discussing how their African American waitress has stereotypes about black people. They spot a Caucasian couple, Rick and Jean, walking down the sidewalk, Jean upon spotting the two rough looking black males grabs the arm of her husband Rick. Anthony spots this act of “blind fear” from Jean and begins to speak of being in a safe, white, and well-lit neighborhood surrounded by caffeinated white individuals and that they are the ones who should be scared, not Jean. They are not scared however because they have guns, guns which they pull on Jean and Rick and ordered them away from their car. They carjack the couple’s black Navigator, which they accidentally run over a Korean man, Choi. After running over Choi they drop him off on the side walk in front of a close hospital and take the SUV to a chop shop in LA. Kennith T. Ponds in The Trauma of Racism: America’s Original Sin, argues “Many people are exposed to adverse life events which might be seen as traumatic, but not all develop psy-chological symptoms. Researchers have suggested that people of color are confronted with hostility, neglect, and racism that may heighten the effects of other traumatic life events. Whites may also be exposed to traumatic events, but their