Paul Haggis Crash
Paul Haggis’ Crash: The Evaporation of White Accountability
March 10, 2009 in Articles | Tags: crash, crash movie, institutional racism, paul haggis, racism, structural racism, white accountability, white supremacy
@page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } “I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group,” writes Peggy McIntosh in her essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” (McIntosh). This invisibility serves as the dominant characteristic of racism in modern society. As McIntosh argues, the institutional and systematic aspects of racism, conferring unearned privilege to some while denying due privilege to others, dismiss any notion of racism as purely a personal prejudice. The film Crash, directed by Paul Haggis, fails to acknowledge this very insight while addressing race relations in the setting of Los Angeles. By portraying racial discrimination as “individual acts of meanness,” rather than a closely guarded, hierarchical social order, Crash brings very little to a serious discussion on race. The shared guilt of all races and ethnicities and the promotion of understanding and tolerance as a solution to America’s race problem, as suggested in Crash, diffuses any serious discussion of white accountability in constructing and perpetuating a socioeconomic order of rigid class, social immobility, and white privilege 220 years in the making
Crash offers a few very poignant examples of the institutional aspects of racism. Officer Jack Ryan demonstrates the all too common abuse of power by white police officers against people of color by forcing a black TV director, Cameron, to watch as Ryan gropes Cameron’s wife, Christine. Exemplifying unwarrantable claims arrogance, as defined by Robin S. Dillon in her article, “Arrogance, Self-Respect, and Personhood,” Ryan assumes “as a right that to which [he] is not entitled.” He is “contemptuous of truth and reality” and
March 10, 2009 in Articles | Tags: crash, crash movie, institutional racism, paul haggis, racism, structural racism, white accountability, white supremacy
@page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } “I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group,” writes Peggy McIntosh in her essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” (McIntosh). This invisibility serves as the dominant characteristic of racism in modern society. As McIntosh argues, the institutional and systematic aspects of racism, conferring unearned privilege to some while denying due privilege to others, dismiss any notion of racism as purely a personal prejudice. The film Crash, directed by Paul Haggis, fails to acknowledge this very insight while addressing race relations in the setting of Los Angeles. By portraying racial discrimination as “individual acts of meanness,” rather than a closely guarded, hierarchical social order, Crash brings very little to a serious discussion on race. The shared guilt of all races and ethnicities and the promotion of understanding and tolerance as a solution to America’s race problem, as suggested in Crash, diffuses any serious discussion of white accountability in constructing and perpetuating a socioeconomic order of rigid class, social immobility, and white privilege 220 years in the making
Crash offers a few very poignant examples of the institutional aspects of racism. Officer Jack Ryan demonstrates the all too common abuse of power by white police officers against people of color by forcing a black TV director, Cameron, to watch as Ryan gropes Cameron’s wife, Christine. Exemplifying unwarrantable claims arrogance, as defined by Robin S. Dillon in her article, “Arrogance, Self-Respect, and Personhood,” Ryan assumes “as a right that to which [he] is not entitled.” He is “contemptuous of truth and reality” and