Crash Reaction Paper

Crash Reaction Paper

In the world, there are vast amounts of hate crimes, racism, and massive bigotry between all ethnicities. Throughout the movie Crash, there are examples of stereotyping, prejudice feelings, and discrimination. A stereotype is a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image about a race, or group of people. When someone is prejudice they hold preconceived judgments, irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, or religion. Discrimination is showing bias, and taking hateful actions against a group of people. Crash looks at race, gender, religion and class. These all play a role in the stereotypes, and assumptions people make about others. The film deals especially with America as it continues to grow as a multicultural society and also explores how racial intolerance and prejudice are problems for all of the United States. There is evidence of stereotyping in the movie Crash. The first stereotype is that African Americans who drive expensive cars are drug dealers or participate in illegal actions for economic gain. All black people do not tip at restaurants, or other places, was another stereotype in the movie. Also Hispanics were portrayed as deceitful if they appear to dress a certain way. White police officers are corrupt when dealing with minorities is a stereotype that occurs several times in Crash. These are all stereotypes that people assume are characteristics of these ethnicities in everyday life. In the first scene of the movie there is a Muslim man inside of a firearm store trying to purchase a pistol. The storeowner is a white Caucasian male that refuses to sell the man a firearm. He has a negative attitude toward the customer simply because of his Muslim background. The owner automatically assumed the man was somehow associated with the Al Qaeda terrorist group, a group that is responsible for thousands of American deaths. This is an example of being prejudice, because he has irrational suspicion, and hatred toward Muslims. This is also another example of stereotyping because the white man assumed he was Arab, when he was really Persian. Officer John Ryan is racist to all who are not white, and believes he is above all African Americans. When an African American man and a Buddhist woman are driving down the street, Ryan decides to pull them over. Ryan interrogates them both, and asks them to get out of the car. He searches the male first. While searching the women he reaches up her skirt and touches her in sexual ways, forcing her husband to watch. This is evidence of racial discrimination because he is showing bias toward race, and women in general. He also pulled them over for no apparent reason relating to their driving habits. He only pulled them over because of their race, religion, and gender. Stereotyping, Prejudice, and discrimination are all problems in today’s society. Crash looks at how America views race, gender, and class. Racial discrimination is still a huge problem in the 21st century, even though it is overlooked. It is something that is impossible to avoid. There are people that will believe that they are better than others, and will judge people when they first see them. Judging people by the cover is something humans automatically do, and it will never stop.