African American Stereotypes In The Film Crash

The movie “Crash” is a stuck-to-your-seat thriller with true meaning. It is easy to see why is has been so successful and garnered so many awards. The viewer is witness to a great cast with several intertwining story lines that centralize around the common stereotypes of many races that plague our society today. We see several important characters that tell the story through several dynamic perspectives that are detrimental to understanding the film, as well as to the understanding of how we can get past these stereotypes and misconceptions in order to not just better our society as a whole, but better our businesses and employees in entirety. Arguably the character with the most severe preconceived notions and racial intolerances would be Officer John Ryan. Ryan, probably in his mid thirties, is a police officer for the Los Angeles County Police Department. On and off the job, he is, generally, the best example of how not to treat people of other races. Ryan demonstrates very racist tendencies. The viewer’s first encounter with Ryan does not prove otherwise. We see Ryan having a telephone conversation with some sort of secretary regarding his fathers HMO plan. The secretary is African American. The conversation is not going the way Ryan
This proves to be ironic as he then proceeds to car jack a couple (Jean and her husband) and drive away in their car. Another instance of Anthony perpetuating the negative stereotype is right before the car jacking when Anthony wonders why he received such poor service at a restaurant. He thinks that it is because the waitress believed that he was going to tip badly, him being a young African American, and he is probably right, however, he only perpetuates this theory by not leaving a tip at all. Anthony is clearly a liability to the moral and civil African